He sat for awhile in silence, thinking and drumming upon the table. Shortly afterward we went to our respective berths, and I lay reading in a book he had lent me until four o’clock. That book--what was it? It was the “Castle of Otranto.” I recollect nothing of it saving the gigantic helmet. But what a wizardry there is in names! Memories for me are imperishably wreathed round about the title of that old-fashioned, all but forgotten novel. Never do I hear the name of that book pronounced but there arises before me the picture of the interior of the brig _Black Watch_. I behold the plainly-furnished cabin, the stand of arms, the midship table upon which Greaves and I would lean, heads supported on our elbows, for an hour at the time, yarning over the past, talking about the future. There is a finer magic in names, even than in perfumes--a subtler power of evocation. I forget the story that that old book tells, but the simple utterance of the name of it will yield me a vision as sharp in detail, as brilliant in color, as though it were the reality beheld at noontide. The trade wind freshened again in the evening. At sundown it was blowing too strong for a topgallant studding sail. There was the promise of a gale in the windward sky, though I felt pretty sure that no gale was meant; and the mercury hung steady in the cabin. But such a sky as it was! bronzed with the western light, and the green seas shaping out of it in dissolving heaps, and on all sides a wilderness of confused airy coloring that sobered, as the eye watched, to the stemming of the shadow out of the east. I never beheld such a wreckage of cloud. All northeast it was like the ruins of a vast continent of vapor, huge heaps of the stuff, mighty pyramids, round-backed mountains staring with copper countenances sunward, and of a milk-white softness in their skirts. I thought I spied twenty ships among them, low down, where the sea line worked against the ridged and rising and breaking stuff, and every ship was a pinion of cloud that soared into a Teneriffe, then went to pieces, and sailed in rent and rugged masses over our mastheads. I spent my dog-watch alone, and paced the deck, keeping an askant eye upon the crew, who were lounging about the galley. I admired the postures of the men. How long does a man need to follow the sea to acquire the art of leaning? The boatmen of our coasts are artists in this picturesque accomplishment; but there is no man leans with the art of the old, deep-water sailor. Not a bone in him but lounges. The very pipe in his mouth loafs.