Hardy found the night-lights burning brightly, and going toward the heel of the bowsprit he touched the Newfoundland lookout with his foot. He patted the invisible, shaggy head, and passed his arm around its neck, and pressed the creature's long wet jaw to his breast, a token of love and encouragement which the dog acknowledged by a grunt or two of happiness. "Keep a bright lookout, Sailor," said Hardy, patting the shaggy, invisible head again, and knowing there were two human lookouts somewhere about, he called, and they answered out of the black blankness to leeward. Well, he could not tell them to keep their eyes skinned, for the sight of man and even of dog lay dead upon that forecastle, but he directed them to listen with all their might, to go often to the head-rail and strain their ears, and they answered, "Ay, ay, sir." Very plainly on this forecastle did you hear the sulky sob of the sea like something large and timid, gasping to the rude shock of the stem. The ocean hissed a little here and there, but the light wind could not give life enough to the glance of the curl of sea to strike through it to the eye, even though one looked straight down over the rail. Hardy slowly made his way aft, and on approaching the binnacle discerned the captain standing in the faint sheen close to the helmsman. "I never remember a thicker fog," said the captain, and he asked questions about the lookout, the dog, and the side-lights. Then walking out of the binnacle haze he struck the bulwarks almost abreast, and Hardy followed and stood alongside. "Whenever I am in this sort of thing," said Captain Layard, "I think of the blind. It is terrible to wake of a bright morning to the eternal darkness of one's life. I should fear the presence of visions in that everlasting gloom. It would be haunted with phantoms, and as thick-set with wild, grotesque, horrible, brassy faces as the human eye when morphia closes the lid." "My father is, as you know, sir, a doctor," said Hardy, "and I've heard him speak of the blind. He declares they are less to be pitied than the stone deaf." The captain pshaw'd. "He would say," continued Hardy, "contrast the faces of the two afflictions. They both force the mind's eye more deeply inwards, but in the one there is the pain of attention ever strained and a baffled, helpless look, whilst the other is mild and restful as though it had found peace in its communes with God." "Your father may be a very clever man," said Captain Layard, "but I have no faith in doctors. I have never met a doctor who did me any good, and I have been ill in my time, believe me. They let my wife die." He paused as if in some passage of deep emotion. In this interval Hardy thought to himself what an extraordinary conversation for the quarter-deck of a ship, close upon midnight, in a dense fog! Some hanging fold of canvas flapped aloft. In a voice as changed as though he was acting, the captain exclaimed: