At midnight Bol aroused me to take his place, and I went on deck to keep watch until four o’clock. It was a quiet, rippling night; the moist breath of old ocean gushed pleasantly over the larboard quarter, and the brig slipped softly forward, clothed with studding sails. Several shadowy figures of the crew moved about the deck; their motions were restless; they’d go to the side, bend over, and peer ahead. At any other time it was just the night for a quiet snooze about the decks, with a coil of rope for a pillow, and the stars right overhead to watch until they winked one asleep. But the men were too restless to “plank it” this night. They guessed the island to be somewhere away out yonder in the dusk. They might hope at any moment for an order from the quarter-deck to back the main topsail yard. They were under the spell of the almighty dollar! Bol hung near, waiting for me to arrive. “Anything in sight, Bol?” “Noting, Mr. Fielding,” he answered out of the depth of his lungs; “but dere vhas time. She vhas not to-morrow yet.” “No more white water?” “No, by tunder, Mr. Fielding. Enough vhas as goodt as a feast. I like der captain’s notion of a star. She vhas a fine idea. Der verm vhas silly. How shall a verm shine in vater. Vill not der vater put her light out?” I was in no humor to talk to him about phosphorus. “You had better go forward and get some rest,” said I. “Should daylight give us the island there will be plenty to do for all hands.” He grunted and moved forward, but not to turn in. His unwieldy shape joined other flitting forms, and I heard his deep voice rumbling first on one bow and then on t’other as he crossed the deck. Greaves made his appearance three or four times during this middle watch. He did not stay. He would come up to me and say: “Well, what do you see?” “I see nothing.” “All the same, it’s in sight, but you’re not a cat, Fielding. Mind your helm. The difference of a quarter of a point might sink the island for us by daybreak.” He would then go to the binnacle and stand looking upon the card, address the helmsman, and after running his eyes over the canvas and stepping to the side, not to peer ahead like the men, but to judge of the rate of sailing by the passage of the sea fire through the deep shadow made by the hull, disappear through the companion way. It was very dark at four o’clock in the morning, at which hour my watch ended. When eight bells were struck I went into the head and sunk my sight into the obscurity forward, running my gaze from beam to beam, for though it was very black there were stars sparely shining over the sea line, and by the obliteration of a handful of them might I guess the presence of land; but I saw nothing. I went aft and found Bol near the wheel and Greaves in the act of stepping through the hatchway. Eight bells had not long been chimed and the larboard watch had not yet gone below.