and there were the remaining seven of a crew, including the
carpenter. We sat in the cabin, one of us from time to time clawing his
way up the ladder to peer through the companion, and we looked at one
another with the melancholy of malefactors waiting to be called from
their cells for the last jaunt to Tyburn.

"May God have mercy upon us!" cries the carpenter. "There must be an
earthquake inside this storm. Something more than wind is going to the
making of these seas. Hear that, now! naught less than a forty-foot
chuck-up could ha' ended in that souse, mates."

"A man can die but once," says Captain Rosy, "and he'll not perish the
quicker for looking at his end with a stout heart;" and with that he put
his hand into the locker on which he had been sitting and pulled out a
jar of whisky, which, after putting his lips to it and keeping them
glued there whilst you could have counted twenty, he handed to me, and
so it went round, coming back to him empty.

I often have the sight of that cabin in my mind's eye; and it was not
long afterwards that it would visit me as such a vision of comfort, I
would with a grateful heart have accepted it with tenfold darker
conditions of danger, had it been possible to exchange my situation for
it. A lantern hung from a beam, and swung violently to the rolling and
pitching of the brig. The alternations of its light put twenty different
meanings, one after another, into the settled dismal and rueful
expressions in the faces of my companions. We were clad in warm clothes,
and the steam rose from the damp in our coats and trousers like vapour
from wet straw. The drink mottled some of our faces, but the spirituous
tincture only imparted a quality of irony to the melancholy of our
visages, as if our mournfulness were not wholly sincere, when, God
knows, our hearts were taken up with counting the minutes when we should
find ourselves bursting for want of breath under water.

Thus it continued till daybreak, all which time we strove to encourage
one another as best we could, sometimes with words, sometimes with
putting the bottle about. It was impossible for any of us at any moment
to show more than our noses above the companion; and even at that you
needed the utmost caution, for the decks being full of water, it was
necessary to await the lurch of the vessel before moving the slide or
cover to the companion, else you stood to drown the cabin.

Being exceedingly anxious, for the brig lay u