The Good Intent lay becalmed in the doldrums. There was not wind enough
to puff out a candle flame. The sails hung limp and idle from the masts,
yet the vessel rolled as in a storm, heaving on a tremendous swell so
violently that it would seem her masts must be shaken out of her. The air
was sweltering, the sky the color of burnished copper, out of which the
sun beat remorselessly in almost perpendicular beams. Pitch ran from
every seam of the decks, great blisters like bubbles rose upon the
woodwork; the decks were no sooner swabbed than--presto!--it was as
though they had not known the touch of water for an age.

For three weeks she had lain thus. Sometimes the hot day would be
succeeded by a night of terrible storm, thunder crashing around, the
whole vault above lacerated by lightning, and rain pouring as it were out
of the fissures in sheets. But in a day all traces of the storm would
disappear, and if, meanwhile, a sudden breath of wind had carried the
vessel a few knots on her southward course, the hopes thus raised would
prove illusory, and once more she would lie on a sea of molten lead, or,
still worse, would be rocked on a long swell that had all the discomforts
of a gale without its compensating excitement.

The tempers of officers and crew had gone from bad to worse. The officers
snapped and snarled at one another, and treated the men with even more
than the customary brutality of the merchant marine of those days. The
crew, lounging about half naked on the decks, seeking what shelter they
could get from the pitiless sun, with little to do and no spirit to do
anything, quarreled among themselves, growling at the unnecessary tasks
set them merely to keep them from flying at each other's throats.

The Good Intent was a fine three-masted vessel of nearly four hundred