No, man; brace up and do yer
dooty as ye may. If every good man was to stay out of bad ships, they'd
get so the devil himself would be afeard to go to sea in them."

I smiled at the little fellow. Here was a man, who had the reputation of
being but little better than an unhung pirate, preaching a most unselfish
doctrine. We had been below for several minutes, and I could hear the
captain's voice bawling out some order on the deck overhead. The bells
were struck by the automatic clock in the cabin, and I turned to go.

"You're a good Christian, anyhow, Trunnell," I said as I started.

Trunnell gave a snort and threw his quid in a corner near a cuspidor. "I
ain't never seen the inside of a church. I only tries to do the square
thing to whoever is a-runnin' of the sea outfit--same as ye'll do if
ye'll take the trouble to think a minit--"

I was out on the deck, and the wind almost blew me into the scuppers. The
captain was standing right above me on the poop watching the growing
light in the east. The waist was full of foamy water that roared and
surged and washed everything movable about. Above, the masts and spars
looked dark in the dim, gray light of the early morning, the strips of
canvas stretching away from the jackstays and flicking dismally to
leeward. All the yards, however, were trimmed nicely, showing Trunnell's
master hand, and on the mainmast, bellying and straining with the
pressure, was a new storm spencer, set snug and true, holding the
plunging vessel up to the great rolling sea that came like a living hill
from the southwest. Forward, a bit of a staysail was set as taut as a
drumhead, looking no bigger than a good-sized handkerchief. Aft, a
trysail, set on the spanker boom, helped the tarpaulin in the mizzen to
bring her head to the sea.

I climbed up the poop ladder and took a look around.

It was a dismal sight. As far as the eye could reach through the white
haze of the flying drift the ocean presented a dirty steel-gray color,
torn into long, ragged streaks of white where the combers rolled on the
high seas before the gale. Overhead all was a deep blank of gray vapor.
The wind was not blowing nearly as hard as it had during my last watch on
deck, but the sea was rolling heavier. It took the _Pirate_ fair on the
port bow, and every now and again it rose so high above her topgallant
rail that it showed green light through the mass that would crash over to
the deck and go roaring white to leeward, m