her counter fairly free of the after-run, though nearly right before the wind: the main-boom had been guyed over to the lee-quarter, till a third of the sail hung clear of her hull, and the breeze swept into the hollow of it, thick with spray. The light from the little binnacle shone up distinctly on the man's face, and with all the desperate, used-up, marbled sort of look of it, like one getting the better of a long spree ashore, I thought there was something uncommonly promising about him, not to say greatly above the run of foremast men. The wet, the wind, and the work he was at, took off the seediness of his clothes; even the old rag of a handkerchief round his hairy neck had got a gloss to it, and he stood handling the wheel with a strange mixture of recklessness and care, as he glanced from the compass to the gaff of the mainsail against the scud, and down again. The very contrast between the man's manner and his outward rig was sufficient to strike one, though plenty of seamen are to be found in the like state ashore: but what fixed me to him above all, was the expression in those two keen, searching, _living_ eyes of his, when they once or twice met mine on their way from aloft to the compass-boxes. 'Twas as if they'd woke up since he came aboard out of a sleepy, maudlin condition, with the "blue-devils" or scarce fully out of 'em; like a sick man's in the lull of a fever, suddenly seen watching you out of the dusk of the bed, when one happens to glance up from the nurse's seat.