The older man let him talk without interruption.  There was something uncommon in the life of this young man, but it would not do to show undue haste in wishing to know it.  It was easily to be seen that Chester was helped in this opportunity to talk to a friend that could understand and be trusted.  They sat late that night.  The sea roared about them in the darkness.  There was a fascination about this thing of seeming life—­the ship—­forcing itself against wind and wave into the darkness, and bearing safely with it in light and comfort a thousand precious souls.

Chester slept fairly well, and was awake next morning at daylight.  Though the ship was pitching and rocking, he felt no indications of sea-sickness.  He gazed out of the port-hole at the racing waves.  Some of them rose to his window, and he looked into a bank of green water.  He got up and dressed.  It was good to think he would not be sick.  Very few were stirring.  A number who were, like himself, immune, were briskly pacing the deck.  Chester joined them and looked about.  This surely must be a storm, thought he.  He had often wished to witness one, from a safe position, of course, and here was one.  As far as he could see in every direction, the ocean was one mass of rolling, seething water.  At a distance it looked like a boiling pot, but nearer the waves rose higher, the ship’s prow cutting them like a knife.

“Quite a storm,” said Chester to a man washing the deck.

“Storm?  Oh, no, sir; just a bit of a blow.”

No one seemed to have any concern regarding the safety of the ship, so Chester concluded that there was no danger, that this was no storm at all, which conclusion was right, as he had later to acknowledge.  The sun came up through a wild sea into a wild sky, casting patches of shifting light on the waters to the east.  Chester kept a lookout for his friends, the elders.  When the breakfast gong sounded, Elder Malby appeared.

“Where are the others?” asked Chester.

“They’ll not get up today; perhaps not tomorrow.  I see you are all right.  You’re lucky.  Come, let us go to breakfast.”

Most of the seats were vacant at the table that morning.  A few smilingly looked around, secure in their superior strength.  Others were bravely trying to do the right thing by sitting down to a morning meal; but a number of these failed, some leaving quietly and deliberately, others rushing away in unceremonial haste.  Chester was quite alone on his side of the table.  If there had been a trifle of “sinking emptiness” in him before, the meal braced him up wonderfully.  In this he thought he had discovered a sure cure for sea-sickness.  One day later he imparted this information to a lady voyager, who received it with the exclamation, “Oh, horrors!”

All that day the wind was strong, and the sea rough.  Even an officer acknowledged that if this weather kept up, the “blow” might grow into a storm.  From the upper deck Chester and Elder Malby looked out on the sublime spectacle.  Like great, green, white-crested hills, the waves raced along the vast expanse.  Towards the afternoon the ship and the wind had shifted their course so that the waves dashed with thunderous roar against the iron sides of the vessel which only heaved and dipped and went steadily on its way.