road red man, clad in oilskins, had just gone up to
relieve the second mate on the bridge. To a landsman's eye, the aspect
of the weather quarter looked black and threatening to the last degree,
and it hardly needed the captain's warning that a dusty time, which
would keep all hands busy, was in front of us.

"You were saying you had no incubus in the matter of family dependent on
you, Mr Holt," the captain remarked as we paced the short poop-deck,
which was literally, as he put it, fisherman's walk--three steps and
overboard. "But I hope you've left no one behind who'll be anxious
about you."

"Not a soul," I answered. "I have no friends, only relations, and their
only anxiety--at least, on the part of one of two of the nearest--will
be as to how soon they can file claims to what little I possess."

The other laughed drily at this, and there was a twinkle of sympathetic
fun in his eyes.

"After them, the most anxious person will be the man who let me the
boat," I said. "But I can compensate him, with interest, later on."

I thought of Bindley, and how my disappearance might possibly spoil his
holiday; but then, I didn't suppose it would. He was one of those men
who ought to go about by themselves; in fact, I wondered why he had
moved me to join him in this jaunt, seeing that his idea of
companionable travelling was to go to sleep most of the time or to read
the papers all through dinner. No, he wouldn't mind. On the contrary,
it would give him matter to oraculise upon.

The next three days were something to remember, and we spent most of
them and the corresponding nights either hove to or going dead slow. I
had been through rough weather before, but never such an experience as
that, and, to tell the truth, never do I want to again. Black darkness,
only qualified by a dim oil lamp--for the captain had insisted on my
remaining below--thunderous roaring, crashing and poundings as though
the ship were being ground in pieces between two mighty icebergs. And
then the inert uncertainty of it! Every upheave seemed to be followed
by a downward settling plunge, as though the ship were already on her
way to the bottom. The steward and I stole furtive looks at each other
from white faces as we moved about, nearly knee-deep in water, and I
think the same thought was in both our minds, that each sickening plunge
was going to be the last. Seriously, that momentary expectation of
death, condemned the while to utter