“Good God, Mr. Burns,” I said angrily.  “What on earth are you up to?  What do you mean by coming up on deck in this state?”

“Just that!  Boldness.  The only way to scare the old bullying rascal.”

I pushed him, still growling, against the rail.  “Hold on to it,” I said roughly.  I did not know what to do with him.  I left him in a hurry, to go to Gambril, who had called faintly that he believed there was some wind aloft.  Indeed, my own ears had caught a feeble flutter of wet canvas, high up overhead, the jingle of a slack chain sheet. . . .

These were eerie, disturbing, alarming sounds in the dead stillness of the air around me.  All the instances I had heard of topmasts being whipped out of a ship while there was not wind enough on her deck to blow out a match rushed into my memory.

“I can’t see the upper sails, sir,” declared Gambril shakily.

“Don’t move the helm.  You’ll be all right,” I said confidently.

The poor man’s nerves were gone.  Mine were not in much better case.  It was the moment of breaking strain and was relieved by the abrupt sensation of the ship moving forward as if of herself under my feet.  I heard plainly the soughing of the wind aloft, the low cracks of the upper spars taking the strain, long before I could feel the least draught on my face turned aft, anxious and sightless like the face of a blind man.

Suddenly a louder-sounding note filled our ears, the darkness started streaming against our bodies, chilling them exceedingly.  Both of us, Gambril and I, shivered violently in our clinging, soaked garments of thin cotton.  I said to him: 

“You are all right now, my man.  All you’ve got to do is to keep the wind at the back of your head.  Surely you are up to that.  A child could steer this ship in smooth water.”

He muttered:  “Aye!  A healthy child.”  And I felt ashamed of having been passed over by the fever which had been preying on every man’s strength but mine, in order that my remorse might be the more bitter, the feeling of unworthiness more poignant, and the sense of responsibility heavier to bear.

The ship had gathered great way on her almost at once on the calm water.  I felt her slipping through it with no other noise but a mysterious rustle alongside.  Otherwise, she had no motion at all, neither lift nor roll.  It was a disheartening steadiness which had lasted for eighteen days now; for never, never had we had wind enough in that time to raise the slightest run of the sea.  The breeze freshened suddenly.  I thought it was high time to get Mr. Burns off the deck.  He worried me.  I looked upon him as a lunatic who would be very likely to start roaming over the ship and break a limb or fall overboard.

I was truly glad to find he had remained holding on where I had left him, sensibly enough.  He was, however, muttering to himself ominously.

This was discouraging.  I remarked in a matter-of-fact tone: