quarter-deck sloping from their feet to the lee waterways, whence at intervals there would come a sound of choking and gasping as the heave of the ship brought the dark Channel surge brimming to the scupper holes. The growling hum of the voices of the men blended in a strange effect upon the ear with the shrill singing of the wind in the rigging and the ceaseless washing noises over the side and the long-drawn creaking sounds which arise from all parts of a ship struggling against a head sea under a press of canvas. Aft on the poop where I was standing the vessel had something of a deserted look. The pilot had been dropped off Deal; the officer of the watch (the chief mate) was stumping the weather-side of the deck from the ladder to abreast of the foremost skylight; the dark figure of the captain swung in a sort of pendulum-tramping from the mizzen rigging to the grating abaft the wheel. Dim as a distant firebrand over the port quarter, windily flickering upon the stretch of throbbing waters, shone the lantern of the lightship off the South Sand Head; and it was odd to mark how it rose and fell upon the speeding night sky to the swift yet stately pitching of our ship, with the figure of the man at the helm somehow showing the vaguer for it, spite of the shining of the binnacle lamp flinging a little golden haze round about the compass stand, abaft which the shape of the fellow showed vague as the outline of a ghost. Ha! thought I, _this_ is being at sea now indeed! Why, though we were in narrow waters yet, there was such a note of ocean yearning in the thunderous wash of the weather billows sweeping along the bends that, but for the pale glimmer of the line of land trending away to starboard, I might easily have imagined the whole waters of the great Atlantic to be under our bow. It was a bit chilly, and I caught myself hugging my peacoat to me with a half-formed resolution to make for my cabin, where there were yet some traps of mine remaining to be stowed away. But I lingered--lover of all sea-effects, as I then was and still am--to watch a fine brig blowing past us along to the Downs, the strong wind gushing fair over her quarter, and her canvas rising in marble-like curves to the tiny royals; every cloth glancing in pearl to the dance of the moon amongst the clouds, every rope upon her glistening out into silver wire, with the foam, white as sifted snow, lifting to her hawse-pipes to the clipper shearing of her keen stem, and not a light aboard of her but what was kindled by the luminary in the glass and brass about her decks as she went rolling past us delicate as a vision, pale as steam, yet of an exquisite grace as determinable as a piece of painting on ivory.