At last the breeze died away altogether and we lay there rocked as gently as a first-born by its mother. The little cloud in the northwest was becoming somewhat too lusty for my taste, but as yet there was no sign of really dangerous weather. So we swung and swayed until the sun was low down in the west, and then the lightness changed to something more sombre very quickly, for the cloud had extended itself ambitiously, and the sun’s last slanting rays we failed to get. The breeze, too, had returned, coming this time from the north and having a greater and increasing vigour to it. The raft began to act with even less obedience to the steering oar, strain I ever so hardly, for the sail now took the wind endwise alone, and this could not avail. Not long did this continue. The waves had begun to rise, though by no means roughly, and the end of the vessel where I laboured was caught and twirled by one of them so smartly that it lay in a new way, and in a moment the wind had caught a hold upon the sail again and we were turned fairly about and headed for the south, stern foremost, if, indeed, we might be said to have a stern, since the ends of the craft were alike in every way. We had but one resource. The steering oar was shifted from what had been the stern to the end now made so, and we were sailing again, with oaths or prayers in our mouths according to the impulse of each. My own mood was not greatly either for oath or prayer now. As the uncouth sail filled or tautened and the boat leaped forward as clumsily as it did strenuously, the wild, fierce sense of abandon and utter daring came back upon me in a wave and I whooped aloud in zest of it, my comrades catching the wild unction and yelling as loudly in the same headstrong spirit. Often since have I thought of that audacious moment and wondered if such lifted moods might not be sometimes but the flaming out of a new man and a greater one, to make the most of dangerous opportunity? Have not the best deeds been often but the issue of an outbreak, foolhardy and desperate it may have seemed, of some strong man inspired by that for which he could give no reason? And, launched into some course of hazard, has not man often been so sustained throughout it that he has won his way, laughing or cursing at every jeopardy, until he has accomplished that which was good for him and for his kind as well? Truly the gods have curious ways! So drove we southward half through the night, when again the wind changed, this time carrying us to the westward, though so gradually that Malchus, who had replaced me at the oar while I lay sleeping, held it so skilfully and firmly that the stern was still the stern, with which feat he was much delighted. With the morning the sun was shining again, though the wind had not abated.