‘Ay,’ he answered; ‘that muck’s a-drawing up, and there’ll be thunder in it too, if my corns speaks right. Niver had no such aching in my toes as this morning since last Toosday was two year, when we fell in off the Hope with the ugliest thunderstorm that I can remember south of the heequator. When my corns begins to squirm I always know that thunder ain’t fur off.’ ‘Well, thunder or no thunder,’ said I, ‘I hope there’s to come wind enough in the wake of all this to blow us along. We shall be having to call it sixty days to the Line, bo’sun, if we don’t mind our eye;’ and giving him a friendly nod, I made my way to my cabin to finish dressing. The gloomy appearance continued all the morning without the least change. The wind fell dead; and a prodigious hush overhung the sea, a stillness that grew absolutely overwhelming to the fancy, if you gave your mind to it, and stood watching the heave of the swell running in ugly green heaps without a sound. Noises were curiously distinct. The voice of a man hailing the forecastle from the foretopmast cross-trees sounded on the poop as though he had called from the maintop. A laugh from near the wheel had a startlingly near note, though it came to you along the whole length of the after-deck. The water brimming to the channels alongside to the stoop of the hull sent the oddest hollowest sobbing tone into the air, as though some monster were strangling alongside. Halliards had been let go and sails clewed up and hauled down, and the _Countess Ida_ lay with something of a naked look as she wallowed with the clumsiness of a wide-beamed ship under topsails and fore course; and all the rest of the square canvas, saving the royals and mizzen topgallant-sail, which were furled, swinging in and out festooned by the grip of the gear.