the silent man, who seldom looked up, and wandered innocently over
the waters with the only visible purpose of getting food, raiment,
and house-room for three people ashore. Dirty weather he had known, of
course. He had been made wet, uncomfortable, tired in the usual way,
felt at the time and presently forgotten. So that upon the whole he had
been justified in reporting fine weather at home. But he had never been
given a glimpse of immeasurable strength and of immoderate wrath, the
wrath that passes exhausted but never appeased--the wrath and fury
of the passionate sea. He knew it existed, as we know that crime and
abominations exist; he had heard of it as a peaceable citizen in a town
hears of battles, famines, and floods, and yet knows nothing of what
these things mean--though, indeed, he may have been mixed up in a street
row, have gone without his dinner once, or been soaked to the skin in
a shower. Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as
some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into
a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been
made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror.
There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate--or thus disdained by
destiny or by the sea.



II

Observing the steady fall of the barometer, Captain MacWhirr thought,
"There's some dirty weather knocking about." This is precisely what he
thought. He had had an experience of moderately dirty weather--the term
dirty as applied to the weather implying only moderate discomfort to the
seaman. Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the
end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic