apparition of a hill in pursuit of us--the hill ran in to run over
us--and in that very moment of crisis the slope of wet deck appeared
again, and the lashed boat. The cold iron was wet and slippery, but I
grasped it firmly, as though that were an essential condition of
existence in such a place.

The _Windhover_, too, looked so small. She was diminished. She did not
bear herself as buoyantly as yesterday. Often she was not quick enough
to escape a blow. She looked a forlorn trifle, and there was no aid in
sight. I cannot say those hills, alive and deliberate on all sides, were
waves. They were the sea. The dawn astern was a narrow band of dead
white, an effort at daybreak suddenly frustrated by night, but not
altogether expunged. The separating black waters bulked above the dawn
in regular upheavals, shutting out its pallor, and as incontinently
collapsed again to release it to make the _Windhover_ plainer in her
solitude.

The skipper waddled briskly aft, and stood beside me. He put his nose
inside the galley. "I smell coffee," he said. His charge reared, and
pitched him against the bulwarks. "Whoa, you bitch," he cried
cheerfully. "Our fleet ought not to be far off," he explained. "Ought
to see something of them soon." He glanced casually round the emptinesss
of the dawn. He might have been looking for some one with whom he had
made an appointment at Charing Cross. He then backed into the hatch and
went below. The big mate appeared, yawned, stooped to examine a lashed
spar, did not give the sunrise so much as a glance, did not allow the
ocean to see that he was even aware of its existence, but went forward to
the bridge.

The clouds lowered during the morning, and through that narrowed space