"Oh, the captain, you mean?" said he, "don't think there is--he's a bad subject! If we were out at sea now, Mr Collins, the _calenture_ would make him think the waves all grass, or something as green as--as the cawdets used to call--" I looked at the fellow sternly, and he changed his key, though with a surprised air. "You're blessed early up, though, you two!" said he. "I suppose that cursed squall kept you idlers awake; but how they managed without the first mate I can't think. Clever fellow, Finch! but wasn't it a curious trick of the poor skipper to box him up below here? I fancy he'd a guess we would all soon be under the mate's command! It's a queer thing the brain, isn't it, Mr Collins? For exaumple, now, there's the captain it makes think something or other a clock near London, with everything accordingly! Macleod fancies it a soopernatural knell, and twaddles about some Calvinist stuff he learnt at school. Then you and me, you know, imaugines it's a bird--now whuch is it after all? _Nothing_--maybe, eh?" The fellow capped all with a sneer, as much as to say I was a fool, which I had stood from him several times before; though now I could have kicked him, more for his heartless way than aught else. "I'll tell you, Mr Small," said I, "what I think _you_--you're neither more nor less than a--" but I turned on my heel. "I'm off, however," said he, "to turn in again." Through the half-closed door one could see the sick man's face sleeping so quiet in the shadow from the lamp, you heard not a breath. I looked up the after-hatchway. It seemed still quite dark; and a patch of the deep dark-blue sky showed high over the square opening, with two or three keen sparks of stars, green ones and blue ones--you'd have thought the ladder, short as it was, went up to somewhere clean above the world. But the moment I got on deck, I saw it was really lighter--the heavy fog creeping slowly astern of the ship on both hands; the white mist rolling faster over it before the sea-breeze against her bows, which had swung seaward by this time from the tide, that rushed like a mill-stream upon both her tight cables; while the muddy river-water, bubbling, eddying, and frothing away past, spread far up in the middle, into the dusk astern. _Such_ a jabbering, croaking, hissing, shrieking, and yelling, too, as burst into one's ears out of the dark, as if whole legions of monkeys, bull-frogs, parrots, parroqueets, and what not, were coming together full upon us from both sides, one band nearer than the other; till the heavy boom of the surf round the point, and the roar of the tide coming in over the shallows about the river-mouth, pretty well drowned it. The sudden change was a good relief, Babel though it seemed, after the closeness below, with what had been going on; and I looked ahead towards the sea, which lay away out off our larboard bow, round the headland, and over the opposite point; a cold, watery streak of light showing it from where the breakers rose