The crew lagged at their work; particularly old Paterson, who crawled into the shrouds so sluggardly that the captain marked him, and in round sea terms demanded why he did not get to unfurling the sails more seamanlike. Old Paterson turned like an aged rattlesnake. “As we eat, so shall we work.” The captain caught the mutter, and so did John Gow, the second mate. The captain prudently did nothing about it; the second mate grinned and gazed innocently out at the greenish sea. II Apprehension--almost premonition--dropped heavily upon the skipper as the day marched to a gray and windy evening. The complaining deputation that had assaulted his quarter-deck in the early afternoon, the open grumbling of old Paterson, and above all, no doubt, a something in the demeanor of the men, which an experienced master might read like the signs of the sky, foreboded the brewing of violence. He and his mate were standing on the quarter-deck, where, in the dusk, two or three men passed and repassed them on the business of the ship. The mate himself felt the coming of a worse storm than that of wind and wave, and when the captain, bracing himself sufficiently to confess his fears and suggest that small arms should be gathered and placed in his cabin “in case anything should happen”, his chief officer, glad to air his secret anxiety, at once set about the business. And the first thing he did was to call John Gow and order him to attend to the cleaning of the ship’s muskets, pistols and cannon. “Aye, aye, sir,” responded Gow, and slipped briskly forward. Almost at the same time two of the men who had been fumbling with the ropes on the quarter-deck sank down the companion ladder and met the second mate in the forward gloom. The three spoke together closely, with much tossing of indicative thumbs over their shoulders. The arming of the captain’s cabin went but tardily; little delays such as lost keys and so forth kept the thing at pause until eight o’clock, the daily hour of divine worship, not to be foregone for anything but an irresistible typhoon. In the “great cabin,” as it was called to distinguish it from the lesser cabins of the mate, surgeon and supercargo, one half of the crew met while the other half kept on deck and worked the ship, thus taking turn and turn about at prayers. The captain stood under the lantern which jerked and bobbed and anon struck its metal guards sharply against the ceiling with the tumbling of the ship; the pigtailed crowd knelt in a shadowy motley about him, the jumping light threw the blackness off the polished oaken wainscoting, or gleamed an instant on the captain’s graying beard, and again suddenly and sharply picked out a hairy, tattooed arm bracing some worshipper against his lurching chapel.