latitude of the trades, and the wind is capricious. Rain squalls and
wind squalls vex the Elsinore. One hour we may be rolling
sickeningly in a dead calm, and the next hour we may be dashing
fourteen knots through the water and taking off sail as fast as the
men can clew up and lower away. A night of calm, when sleep is well-
nigh impossible in the sultry, muggy air, may be followed by a day of
blazing sun and an oily swell from the south'ard, connoting great
gales in that area of ocean we are sailing toward--or all day long
the Elsinore, under an overcast sky, royals and sky sails furled, may
plunge and buck under wind-pressure into a short and choppy head-sea.

And all this means work for the men. Taking Mr. Pike's judgment,
they are very inadequate, though by this time they know the ropes.
He growls and grumbles, and snorts and sneers whenever he watches
them doing anything. To-day, at eleven in the morning, the wind was
so violent, continuing in greater gusts after having come in a great
gust, that Mr. Pike ordered the mainsail taken off. The great
crojack was already off. But the watch could not clew up the
mainsail, and, after much vain sing-songing and pull-hauling, the
watch below was routed out to bear a hand.

"My God!" Mr. Pike groaned to me. "Two watches for a rag like that
when half a decent watch could do it! Look at that preventer bosun
of mine!"

Poor Nancy! He looked the saddest, sickest, bleakest creature I had
ever seen. He was so wretched, so miserable, so helpless. And
Sundry Buyers was just as impotent. The expression on his face was
of pain and hopelessness, and as he pressed his abdomen he lumbered
futilely about, ever seeking something he might do and ever failing