vailed fore and aft; for Captain Winter had
given instructions that the bells were not to be struck, and that all
orders were to be passed quietly along the deck by word of mouth. The
binnacle light was also carefully masked, and the skylight obscured by a
close-fitting painted canvas cover that had been made for the express
purpose. There was, therefore, nothing whatever to betray our presence
except the soft rustling of our canvas, and, as the same sounds would
prevail on board any other craft that might happen to drift within our
vicinity, we were in hopes that, by keeping our ears wide open, we might
become aware of their presence before our own was betrayed. It is true
that these precautions greatly increased the risk of collision with
other vessels; but we trusted that the watchfulness upon which we
depended for the discovery of other craft in our neighbourhood would
suffice to avert any such danger.

In this way the time slowly dragged along until midnight, when I was
called to take charge of the deck. Upon turning out I found that there
was no improvement in the weather, except that the faint breathing from
the northward had strengthened sufficiently to put our canvas to sleep,
and to increase our speed to a trifle over six knots; but it was just as
dark and thick as ever. Lovell, whom I was relieving, informed me that
nothing whatever had been seen or heard during his watch; and that now,
by our dead reckoning, we were, as nearly as possible, thirty miles
south-by-west of Portland Bill. The skipper was still on deck; he had
been up all through the first watch, and announced his intention of
keeping the deck until the weather should clear. The night was now
bitterly cold and frosty; the rail, the ropes coiled upon the pins, the
companion slide, even the glass of the binnacle, all were thickly coated
with rime, and the decks were slippery with it.

It was close upon two bells; and everything on board the _Dolphin_ was
silent as the grave, no sound being audible save the soft seething of
the water past the bends, and the "gush" of the wave created by the
plunge of the schooner's sharp bows into the hollows of the swell, when
the skipper, who was standing near me on the starboard side of the
binnacle, sucking away at a short pipe, caught hold of my arm and said
in a low tone:

"Listen, Bowen! you have sharp ears. Tell me if you hear anything
hereaway on the starboard bow?"

I listened intently for some