A few minutes later I went on deck to finish my final smoke before turning in. The rain had ceased. The air was delightfully cool. The wind had gone, but cats-paws came up every now and then, bellying the sails out for a moment or two with a great jerk, but dropping suddenly the canvas fell back against the masts with a bang and rattle of blocks and creaking of sheaves. The sky was a mass of picturesque clouds with fantastic outlines. Here and there groups of stars were visible, and with chastened light, as if shining through gauze, the moon made a silver pathway over the face of the deep until it blended with the horizon in impenetrable blackness, which rounded off, so to speak, the weird scene. The captain had discarded his oilskins, which were lying on the top of a hencoop, and he himself was leaning on his elbows over the taffrail, complacently smoking a cigar, and absorbed apparently in the contemplation of the phosphoric display that flashed and glistened under the ship’s counter as she fell and rose to the swell. I approached him. He straightened himself up, turned his back to the rail, folded his arms across his breast, and puffing at his cigar as he cast a scrutinising eye aloft at the flapping sails, he said in a cheerful tone: ‘Quite a contrast to a little while ago, isn’t it, Mr. Gibling? But it’s the sort of weather we must expect in these latitudes.’ I was struck by his changed manner. He seemed so cheerful and light-hearted. He wasn’t like the same man I had seen down in the cabin half an hour ago. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I remarked, for the sake of saying something. ‘It’s not your first voyage to sea, is it?’ he asked. ‘No.’ ‘Have you been to Cuba before?’ ‘Oh yes.’ ‘Ah! then you will know pretty well what kind of voyage it is.’ I told him that I knew fairly well what one might expect on such a voyage at that time of the year, and we continued to chat pleasantly for a little while until six bells struck (eleven o’clock). ‘All’s well!’ came in solemn tones from the look-out man on the fo’c’stle. ‘Well, I think I shall turn in,’ said the captain, as he threw the stump of his cigar overboard, glanced up aloft, then at the binnacle, and calling the second officer who was on watch, and telling him to keep the ship on the same course until the morning, he moved towards the companion-way, and I followed. When we reached the saloon he put out his hand. As I took it he said ‘Good-night,’ and immediately added in lower tones, ‘Don’t forget your promise.’