reservoir of the heaviest mist I ever felt. At that instant a terrible
sensation of instability took possession of me, very like that one
experiences in wandering over deep new-fallen snow, concealing Heaven
knows what crevasses beneath, only more so. My heart worked like a
pulsometer, and every nerve in my quivering corpus said as plain as
print, “You’ll come an awful cropper directly.” And it was even so.
All my lost power of independent movement came back to me at once,
and frantically clutching at the fog wreaths around me I began to
fall. Most of us know that ugly old dream where the bed plays see-saw
over some unfathomable abyss, higher at every swing, till suddenly we
wake snatching at the bed-clothes and bathed in sweat. In my case,
unfortunately, the fall came too. It seemed to occupy hours. While I
came hurtling from the heavens I remembered with satisfaction that the
wife would get her half-pay right up to the end of the voyage, and I
fervently hoped she had kept my insurance premiums paid up. Then the
great solemn sea sprang up to meet me. There was a Number One splash,
a rush of salt water in my ears, and the blessed daylight once more.
Right close to me was the ship, all hands gaping over the side at me
as if I was a spook and never a one offering to heave me a line. The
manner of my reappearance seemed to have knocked them all silly. All
except the old man, that is. He stooped deliberately, picked up the
coil of the main topsail brace, and hove it at me. It fell all about
me in a tangle, but I managed to get hold of the standing part, which
I froze to tight, while the skipper hauled me alongside. Feeling numb
and stupid, I yet managed to haul myself on board, and with all the
chaps gaping at me with protruding eyes, staggered up on to the poop.
The skipper met me with a scowl, saying grimly, “Looky here, Mr. Brown,
the next time you quit this ship, with my leave or without, you’ll stay
there.” I felt hurt, but disinclined to talk back, so I went below to
change my dunnage and enter up my log-book.
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling variations were made consistent
when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise
they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Page 189: “was bowling rapidly” was printed that way.