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When I heard the others complaining of the loneliness of our surroundings, I said nothing at first. I was no sailor man, and I was on board only by tolerance. But I looked again at the maddening sameness of the horizon—the same vacant, void horizon that we had seen now for sixteen days on end, and felt in my wits and in my nerves that same formless rebellion and protest such as comes when the same note is reiterated over and over again.

It may seem a little thing that the mere fact of meeting with no other ship should have ground down the edge of the spirit. But let the incredulous—bound upon such a hazard as ours—sail straight into nothingness for sixteen days on end, seeing nothing but the sun, hearing nothing but the thresh of his own screw, and then put the question.

And yet, of all things, we desired no company. Stealth was our one great aim. But I think there were moments—toward the last—when the Three Crows would have welcomed even a cruiser.

Besides, there was more cause for depression, after all, than mere isolation.

On the seventh day Hardenberg and I were forward by the cat-head, adjusting the grain with some half-formed intent of spearing the porpoises that of late had begun to appear under our bows, and Hardenberg had been computing the number of days we were yet to run.

“We are some five hundred odd miles off that island by now,” he said, “and she’s doing her thirteen knots handsome. All’s well so far—but do you know, I’d just as soon raise that point o’ land as soon as convenient. ”

“How so?” said I, bending on the line. “Expect some weather?”

“Mr. Dixon,” said he, giving me a curious glance, “the sea is a queer proposition, put it any ways. I’ve been a seafarin’ man since I was big as a minute, and I know the sea, and what’s more, the Feel o’ the sea. Now, look out yonder. Nothin’, hey? Nothin’ but the same ol’ skyline we’ve watched all the way out. The glass is as steady as a steeple, and this ol’ hooker, I reckon, is as sound as the day she went off the ways. But just the same if I were to home now, a-foolin’ about Gloucester way in my little dough-dish—d’ye know what? I’d put into port. I sure would. Because why? Because I got the Feel o’ the Sea, Mr. Dixon. I got the Feel o’ the Sea. ”

I had heard old skippers say something of this before, and I cited to Hardenberg the experience of a skipper captain I once knew who had turned turtle in a calm sea off Trincomalee. I ask him what this Feel of the Sea was warning him against just now (for on the high sea any premonition is a premonition of evil, not of good). But he was not explicit.

“I don’t know,” he answered moodily, and as if in great perplexity, coiling the rope as he spoke. “I don’t know. There’s some blame thing or other close to us, I’ll bet a hat. I don’t know the name of it, but there’s a big Bird in the air, just out of sight som’eres, and,” he suddenly exclaimed, smacking his knee and leaning forward, “I—don’t—like—it—one—dam’—bit. ”

The same thing came up in our talk in the cabin that night, after the dinner was taken off and we settled down to tobacco. Only, at this time, Hardenberg was on duty on the bridge. It was Ally Bazan who spoke instead.

“Seems to me,” he hazarded, “as haow they’s somethin’ or other a-goin’ to bump up pretty blyme soon. I shouldn’t be surprised, naow, y’know, if we piled her up on some bally uncharted reef along o’ to-night and went strite daown afore we’d had a bloomin’ charnce to s’y ‘So long, gen’lemen all.’“