existence. I have heard a reserved, silent man, with no nerves to
speak of, after three days of hard running in thick south-westerly
weather, burst out passionately: "I wish to God we could get sight
of something!"

We had just gone down below for a moment to commune in a battened-
down cabin, with a large white chart lying limp and damp upon a
cold and clammy table under the light of a smoky lamp. Sprawling
over that seaman's silent and trusted adviser, with one elbow upon
the coast of Africa and the other planted in the neighbourhood of
Cape Hatteras (it was a general track-chart of the North Atlantic),
my skipper lifted his rugged, hairy face, and glared at me in a
half-exasperated, half-appealing way. We have seen no sun, moon,
or stars for something like seven days. By the effect of the West
Wind's wrath the celestial bodies had gone into hiding for a week
or more, and the last three days had seen the force of a south-west
gale grow from fresh, through strong, to heavy, as the entries in
my log-book could testify. Then we separated, he to go on deck
again, in obedience to that mysterious call that seems to sound for
ever in a shipmaster's ears, I to stagger into my cabin with some
vague notion of putting down the words "Very heavy weather" in a
log-book not quite written up-to-date. But I gave it up, and
crawled into my bunk instead, boots and hat on, all standing (it
did not matter; everything was soaking wet, a heavy sea having
burst the poop skylights the night before), to remain in a
nightmarish state between waking and sleeping for a couple of hours
of so-called rest.

The south-westerly mood of the West Wind is an enemy of sleep, and
even of a recumbent position, in the responsible officers of a