Towards evening it was thick and foggy, but as the sun set it began to clear, and I heard the men saying that the moon (which was nearly at the full) would make a clear night of it.  It was unquestionably clearer overhead, and the waves ran smoother, as if the sea were recovering its temper, and Alister and I went below at 9 P.M. and turned into our hammocks for a few hours’ sleep, before taking our part in the night-watch that lasts from 12 midnight till 4 A.M.

It is astonishing what a prompt narcotic the knowledge that you’ll have to be up again in an hour or two is.  Alister and I wasted no time in conversation.  He told me the fall in the barometer was “by-ordinar” (which I knew as well as he); and I told him the wind was undoubtedly falling (which he knew as well as I):  and after this inevitable interchange of the uppermost news and anxieties of the occasion, we bade GOD bless each other, and I said the prayers of my babyhood because they were shortest, and fell fast asleep.

The noises that woke us were new noises, but they made up the whole of that peculiar sound which is the sum of human excitement.  “We are going down this time,” was my thought, and I found myself less philosophical about it than I had imagined.  Neither Alister nor I were long in putting on our clothes, and we rushed up on deck without exchanging a word.  By the time we got there, where the whole ship’s crew had gone before us, we were as wildly excited as any one of them, though we had not a notion what it was all about.  I knew enough now for the first glance to tell me that the ship was in no special danger.  Even I could tell that the gale had gone down, the night was clear, and between the scudding of black clouds with silver linings, the moon and stars shone very beautifully, though it made one giddy to look at them from the weird way in which the masts and yards seemed to whip across the sky.

We still rolled, and when the side of the ship went up, it felt almost overhead, and I could see absolutely nothing of the sea, which was vexatious, as that was obviously the point of interest.  The rigging on that side was as full of men as a bare garden-tree might be of sparrows, and all along the lee bulwarks they sat and crouched like sea-birds on a line of rock.  Suddenly we rolled, down went the leeside, and I with it, but I caught hold of the lowest step of the forecastle ladder and sat fast.  Then as we dipped I saw all that they were seeing from the masts and rigging—­the yet restless sea with fast-running waves, alternately inky black, and of a strange bright metallic lead-colour, on which the scud as it drove across the moon made queer racing shadows.  And it was on this stormy sea that every eye from the captain’s to the cook’s was strained.

Roll! down we went again to starboard, and up went the bulwarks and I could see nothing but the sky and the stars, and the masts and yards whipping across them as before, though the excitement grew till I could bear it no longer, and scrambled up the ladder on to the forecastle, and pushed my way to the edge and lay face downwards, holding on for my life that I might not be blown away, whilst I was trying to see what was to be seen.