ter the first week out we fell in with foul winds and heavy weather.
The sea was high. The _Nonesuch_ being an old-fashioned ship, and badly
loaden, rolled beyond belief; so that the skipper trembled for his
masts, and I for my life. We made no progress on our course. An
unbearable ill-humour settled on the ship: men, mates, and master,
girding at one another all day long. A saucy word on the one hand, and a
blow on the other, made a daily incident. There were times when the
whole crew refused their duty; and we of the afterguard were twice got
under arms--being the first time that ever I bore weapons--in the fear
of mutiny.

In the midst of our evil season sprang up a hurricane of wind; so that
all supposed she must go down. I was shut in the cabin from noon of one
day till sundown of the next; the Master was somewhere lashed on deck;
Secundra had eaten of some drug and lay insensible; so you may say I
passed these hours in an unbroken solitude. At first I was terrified
beyond motion, and almost beyond thought, my mind appearing to be
frozen. Presently there stole in on me a ray of comfort. If the
_Nonesuch_ foundered, she would carry down with her into the deeps of
that unsounded sea the creature whom we all so feared and hated; there
would be no more Master of Ballantrae, the fish would sport among his
ribs; his schemes all brought to nothing, his harmless enemies at peace.
At first, I have said, it was but a ray of comfort; but it had soon
grown to be broad sunshine. The thought of the man's death, of his
deletion from this world, which he embittered for so many, took
possession of my mind. I hugged it, I found it sweet in my belly. I
conceived the ship's last plunge, the sea bursting upon all sides into
the cabin, the brief mortal conflict there, all by myself, in that
closed place; I numbered the horrors, I had almost said with
satisfaction; I felt I could bear all and more, if the _Nonesuch_
carried down with her, overtook by the same ruin, the enemy of my poor
master's house. Towards noon of the second day the screaming of the wind
abated; the ship lay not so perilously over, and it began to be clear to
me that we were past the height of the tempest. As I hope for mercy, I
was singly disappointed. In the selfishness of that vile, absorbing
passion of hatred, I forgot the case of our innocent shipmates, and
thought but of myself and my enemy. For myself, I was already old; I had
never been young, I was not formed