we might have believed the surrounding universe to be a huge blue
liquid ball, and our little ship the one solitary material speck in
all creation, floating in the midst of it.

No sound broke on our ears save the soft puff now and then of a
porpoise, the slow creak of the masts, as we swayed gently on the
swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of
the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of
the schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck
lolled in sleepy indolence, overcome with excessive heat. Bloody
Bill, as the men invariably called him, was standing at the tiller,
but his post for the present was a sinecure, and he whiled away the
time by alternately gazing in dreamy abstraction at the compass in
the binnacle, and by walking to the taffrail in order to spit into
the sea. In one of these turns he came near to where I was
standing, and, leaning over the side, looked long and earnestly
down into the blue wave.

This man, although he was always taciturn and often surly, was the
only human being on board with whom I had the slightest desire to
become better acquainted. The other men, seeing that I did not
relish their company, and knowing that I was a protege of the
captain, treated me with total indifference. Bloody Bill, it is
true, did the same; but as this was his conduct towards every one
else, it was not peculiar in reference to me. Once or twice I
tried to draw him into conversation, but he always turned away
after a few cold monosyllables. As he now leaned over the taffrail
close beside me, I said to him, -

"Bill, why is it that you are so gloomy? Why do you never speak to