Fortunately it seemed I had nothing to do with them nor they with me; all that was ordered for the eking out of my passage, as Risk had said, was to copy the manifest, and I had no sooner set to that than I discerned it was a gowk's job just given me to keep me in employ in the cabin. Whatever his reason, the man did not want me about his deck. I saw that in an interlude in my writing, when I came up from his airless den to learn what progress old rotten-beams made under all her canvas. It had declined to a mere handful of wind, and the vessel scarcely moved, seemed indeed steadfast among the sea-birds that swooped and wheeled and cried around her. I saw the sun just drop among blood-red clouds over Stirling, and on the shore of Fife its pleasant glow. The sea swung flat and oily, running to its ebb, and lapping discernibly upon a recluse promontory of land with a stronghold on it. “What do you call yon, Horn?” I said to the seaman I have before mentioned, who leaned upon the taffrail and watched the vessel's greasy wake, and I pointed to the gloomy buildings on the shore. “Blackness Castle,” said he, and he had time to tell no more, for the skipper bawled upon him for a shirking dog, and ordered the flemishing of some ropes loose upon the forward deck. Nor was I exempt from his zeal for the industry of other folks for he came up to me with a suspicious look, as if he feared I had been hearing news from his foremast man, and “How goes the manifest, Mr. Greig?” says he. “Oh, brawly, brawly!” said I, determined to begin with Captain Daniel Risk as I meant to end. He grew purple, but restrained himself with an effort. “This is not an Ayr sloop, Mr. Greig,” said he; “and when orders go on the _Seven Sisters_ I like to see them implemented. You must understand that there's a pressing need for your clerking, or I would not be so soon putting you at it.” “At this rate of sailing,” says I, “I'll have time to copy some hundred manifests between here and Nova Scotia.” “Perhaps you'll permit me to be the best judge of that,” he replied in the English he ever assumed with his dignity, and seeing there was no more for it, I went back to my quill. It was little wonder, in all the circumstances, that I fell asleep over my task with my head upon the cabin table whereon I wrote, and it was still early in the night when I crawled into the narrow bunk that the skipper had earlier indicated as mine. Weariness mastered my body, but my mind still roamed; the bunk became a coffin quicklimed, and the murderer of David Borland lying in it; the laverock cried across Earn Water and the moors of Renfrew with the voice of Daniel Risk. And yet the strange thing was that I knew I slept and dreamed, and more than once I made effort, and dragged myself into wakefulness from the horrors of my nightmare. At these times there was nothing to hear but the plop of little waves against the side of the ship, a tread on deck, and the call of the watch.