rs only
Elzevir and I were sailors, and the rest took the motion unkindly.

From the first we made bad weather of it, for though we were below and
could see nothing, yet 'twas easy enough to tell there was a heavy
head-sea running, almost as soon as we were well out of harbour.
Although Elzevir and I had not had any chance of talking freely for so
long, and were now able to speak as we liked, being linked so close
together, we said but little. And this, not because we did not value
very greatly one another's company, but because we had nothing to talk
of except memories of the past, and those were too bitter, and came too
readily to our minds, to need any to summon them. There was, too, the
banishment from Europe, from all and everything we loved, and the awful
certainty of slavery that lay continuously on us like a weight of lead.
Thus we said little.

We had been out a week, I think--for time is difficult enough to measure
where there is neither clock nor sun nor stars--when the weather, which
had moderated a little, began to grow much worse. The ship plunged and
laboured heavily, and this added much to our discomfort; because there
was nothing to hold on by, and unless we lay flat on the filthy deck, we
ran a risk of being flung to the side whenever there came a more violent
lurch or roll. Though we were so deep down, yet the roaring of wind and
wave was loud enough to reach us, and there was such a noise when the
ship went about, such grinding of ropes, with creaking and groaning of
timbers, as would make a landsman fear the brig was going to pieces. And
this some of our fellow-prisoners feared indeed, and fell to crying, or
kneeling chained together as they were upon the sloping deck, while they
tried to remember long-forgotten prayers. For my own part, I wondered why
these poor wretches should pray to be delivered from the sea, when all
that was before them was lifelong slavery; but I was perhaps able to look
more calmly on the matter myself as having been at sea, and not thinking
that the vessel was going to founder because of the noise. Yet the storm
rose till 'twas very plain that we were in a raging sea, and the streams
which began to trickle through the joinings of the hatch showed that
water had got below.

'I have known better ships go under for less than this,' Elzevir said to
me; 'and if our skipper hath not a tight craft, and stout hands to work
her, there will soon be two score slaves the less to cut