This was a sort of weather to keep everything very quiet aboard. Hals cooked with difficulty; he scalded himself, broke dishes, and filled the caboose with Dutch oaths. The cold was bitter, and the chief work of the crew lay in keeping themselves warm. Yet no ice formed; no hail or snow ever drove in the sudden dark squalls which burst in guns of hurricane power out of the gale over the stern; we sighted not a berg, and yet the cold was frightful; the wind took the face like a saw, and you felt half flayed when you turned your back to it. The cold of the spray made its drops sting like lead, and it was as though you were shot through the head to be struck by a showering of the brine. Her ladyship kept below. She saw very little of me; in those three days we made no progress in English and Spanish. The violent upheavals of the brig frightened her; then did her eyes grow large, her face look wild; if I was near her she’d grasp me and hold on to me and utter many exclamations in Spanish. I’d catch myself smiling afterward when I thought of those moments; how she used me as though we had grown up, boy and girl, together, never timid in her tricks of touching me, as free with me as a sister, and that’s about it. We were in longitude 63° or 64° west when the westerly gale shifted into the north, and the wind blew in a moderate breeze out of that quarter. The cold lessened with the shift. The sailors moved with some trifle of alacrity, as though they were thawing. The decks dried, we shook out reefs, made sail, coiled down anew fore-and-aft; the smoke blew cheerily from the chimney of the caboose, and with taut running gear and white clothes robing her to the topgallant mastheads the brig renewed her comfortable, homely look. This brought us to the afternoon of what I will call the third day of the gale. I had eaten some supper, talked awhile with my lady, visited my cabin, and returned on deck after an examination of the chart, resolved on a bit more of easting before changing the course. When I passed through the companion way I heard Bol’s voice. He and Galen stood at the bulwarks abreast of the hatch, their faces to the sea, and they conversed in Dutch, keeping their voices down and talking very earnestly. The large swell rolled quietly under the brig; the wind silenced the sails, and after the uproar of the preceding days the repose along the decks and up aloft was almost as the hush of a tropic calm upon the vessel. I stepped to the binnacle. Teach, who was at the wheel, cleared his throat noisily and spat over the taffrail. The Dutchmen looked, and Galen, saying something sharp and quick in Dutch, walked forward. Bol glanced aloft with the air of a man in search of work for his watch; I walked a few paces his way, and he approached me. “How vhas der vetter to be, sir?”