up and down, now from side to side, and now with long forward lurches that combined the other two motions.  During one of these latter the little Jew was half awakened.  He stopped snoring, leaving an abrupt silence in the air.  Then Vandover could hear him threshing about uneasily; still half asleep he began to mutter and swear:  “Dat’s it, r-roll; I woult if I were you; r-roll, dat’s righd—­dhere, soh—­ah, geep it oop—­r-roll, you damnt ole tub, yust r-r-roll.”

The continued pitching, the foul air, and the bitter smoke from the saloonkeepers’ cigars became more than Vandover could stand.  His stomach turned, at every instant he gagged and choked.  He suddenly made up his mind that he could stand it no longer, and determined to go on deck, preferring to walk the night out rather than spend it in the cabin.  He drew on his shoes without lacing them, and dressed himself hurriedly, omitting his collar and scarf; he put his hat on his tumbled hair, swung into his overcoat, and, wrapping his travelling-rug around him, started up toward the deck.  On the stairs he was seized with such a nausea that he could hardly keep from vomiting where he stood, but he rushed out upon the lower deck, gaining the rail with a swimming head.

He sank back upon an iron capstan with a groan, weak and trembling, his eyes full of tears, a bursting feeling in his head.  He was utterly miserable.

It was about half-past two in the morning, and a cold raw wind was whistling through the cordage and flinging the steamer’s smoke down upon the decks and upon the water like a great veil of crepe.  A sickly half-light was spread out between the sea and the heavens.  By its means he could barely distinguish great, livid blotches of fog or cloud whirling across the black sky, and the unnumbered multitude of white-topped waves rushing past, plunging and rising like a vast herd of black horses galloping on with shaking white manes.  Low in the northeast horizon lay a long pale blur of light against which the bow of the steamer, inky black, rose and fell and heaved and sank incessantly.  To the landward side and very near at hand, so near that he could hear the surf at their feet, the long procession of hills continually defiled, vague and formless masses between the sea and sky.  The wind, the noise of the waves rushing past, the roll of the breakers and the groaning of the cordage all blended together and filled the air with a prolonged minor note, lamentable beyond words.  The atmosphere was cold and damp, the spray flying like icy bullets.  The sombre light that hung over the sea reflected itself in long blurred streaks upon the wet decks and slippery iron rods.  Here and there about the rigging a tremulous ball of orange haze showed where the ship’s lanterns were swung.  Directly under him in the stern the screw snarled incessantly in a vortex of boiling water that forever swirled away and was lost in the darkness.  From time to time the indicator of the patent log, just beside him, rang its tiny bell.