--a dark, scowling sky overhead,
charged with sleet and rain squalls that, when we ran into them, lashed
us and stung the skin like whips; the atmosphere was nippingly raw, and
thick enough to veil and blot out everything at a distance of more than
four miles; and the wind was blowing so fresh from the southward that
the men had at length been compelled to unwillingly turn out and snug
the brig down to double-reefed topsails, with the mainsail stowed.
There was a very steep and ugly beam sea running, and the brig was
rolling to it as though bent on rolling the masts out of her; while the
decks were mid-leg deep with the water that she dished in over the rail
at every roll with a regularity that I was very far from appreciating.
Worst of all, there was no pretence whatever on the part of the men to
watch the ship or keep a lookout--the scoundrels were well aware that I
might be depended on for that; the only man on deck was the helmsman;
and from the condition of those who came staggering aft from time to
time at the stroke of the bell to relieve the wheel, I more than
suspected that a drinking bout was under way in the forecastle. Such a
condition of affairs was amply sufficient at any time to create within
me a sense of profound uneasiness, much more so at that especial time;
for we were then in a part of the ocean notorious for sudden, savage
gales, thick weather, and floating ice as deadly as any reef that ever
trapped a ship; and the safety of the brig, and of all hands, might at
any moment be fatally imperilled by the slightest lack of alertness, or
the briefest powerlessness on the part of the crew. It was this
conviction alone that restrained me from an immediate endeavour to
recapture the brig; the conditions were propitious, for as I have said
all hands were below with the exception of the helmsman. The cook, it
is true, was in his galley; but if I chose to arm myself with the
pistols that had been presented to me by the Frenchman aboard the _Marie
Renaud_, it would be no such desperate matter to slip for'ard and clap
the hatch over the fore-scuttle, secure the cook in his galley, and then
compel the half-drunken helmsman to surrender. But to resort to such
measures as those where we then were would have been sheer madness; and
the idea no sooner occurred to me than it was dismissed as
impracticable. But although impracticable just then, it might not be so
later on, when we should have arrived in less perilo