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, making the main deck uninhabitable.  Sometimes a heavy, quick comber would strike her on the bluff of the bow, and the shock would almost knock the men off their feet.  Then the burst of water would shoot high in the air, going sometimes clear to the topgallant yard, nearly a hundred feet above the deck, while all forward would disappear in the flying spray and spume.

“Fine weather, Rolling, hey?” bawled the skipper to me as I gained the poop.

“Oh, it isn’t so bad the way she’s taking it now.  If she hangs on as well as this during the watch, she’ll make good weather of it all right,” I said.