It is one thing I can remember to the man's credit that this innuendo of treachery seemed to make him frantic. He dashed the rum-glass at his feet and struck at me with a fist like a jigot of mutton, and I had barely time to step back and counter. He threw himself at me as he had been a cat; I closed and flung my arms about him with a wrestler's grip, and bent him back upon the table edge, where I might have broken his spine but for Murchison's interference. The mate called loudly for assistance; footsteps pounded on the cuddy-stair, and down came Horn. Between them they drew us apart, and while Murchison clung to his captain, and plied him into quietness with a fresh glass of grog, Horn thrust me not unkindly out into the night, and with no unwillingness on my part. [Illustration 091] It was the hour of dawn, and the haar was gone. There was something in that chill grey monotone of sky and sea that filled me with a very passion of melancholy. The wind had risen, and the billows ran frothing from the east; enormous clouds hung over the land behind us, so that it seemed to roll with smoke from the eternal fires. Out from that reeking pit of my remorse--that lost Scotland where now perhaps there still lay lying among the rushes, with the pees-weep's cry above it, the thing from which I flew, our ship went fast, blown upon the frothy billows, like a ponderous bird, leaving a wake of hissing bubbling brine, flying, as it seemed, to a world of less imminent danger, yet unalluring still. I looked aloft at the straining spars; they seemed to prick the clouds between the swelling sails; the ropes and shrouds stretched infinitely into a region very grey and chill. Oh, the pallor! oh, the cold and heartless spirit of the sea in that first dawning morn! “It's like to be a good day,” said Horn, breaking in upon my silence, and turning to him I saw his face exceeding hollow and wan. The watch lay forward, all but a lad who seemed half-dozing at the helm; Risk and his mate had lapsed to silence in the cuddy. “You're no frien', seemingly, o' the pair below!” said Horn again, whispering, and with a glance across his shoulder at the helm. “It did not look as if I were, a minute or two ago,” said I. “Yon's a scoundrel, and yet I did him an injustice when I thought he meant to sell me.” “I never sailed with a more cheat-the-widdy crew since I followed the sea,” said Horn, “and whether it's the one way or the other, sold ye are.” “Eh?” said I, uncomprehending. He looked again at the helm, and moved over to a water-breaker further forward, obviously meaning that I should follow. He drew a drink of water for himself, drank slowly, but seemed not to be much in the need for it from the little he took, but he had got out of ear-shot of the man steering. “You and me's the gulls this time, Mr. Greig,” said he, whispering. “This is a doomed ship.”