At the same time I felt something gnawing the toe of my boot, which I inferred to be a rat--another agreeable customer for which I had a special abhorrence; but, as for beetles of all kinds, from my boyhood up, they had been an abomination unto me, and a cockroach is the most abominable of all beetles; so between the two I was speedily roused from my state of supine, or rather dogged endurance; and, forgetting the geography of my position, I sprung to my feet, whereby I nearly fractured my skull against the low deck above. I first tried the skylight; it was battened down--then the companion hatch; it was locked--but the ladder leading up to it being cooler than the noisome vapour bath I had left, I remained standing in it, trying to catch a mouthful of fresh air through the joints of the door. All this while we had been slipping along shore with the land-wind on our beam, at the rate of five or six knots, but so gently and silently, that I could distinctly hear the roar of the surf, as the long smooth swell broke on the beach, which, from the loudness of the noise, could not be above a mile to windward of us. I perceived at the same time that the schooner, although going free, did not keep away nor take all the advantage of the land-wind to make his easting, before the sea-breeze set down, that he might have done, so that it was evident he did not intend to beat up, so as to fetch the Crooked Island Passage, which would have been his course, had he been bound for the States; but was standing over to the Cuba shore, at that time swarming with pirates. It was now good daylight, and the terral gradually died away, and left us rolling gunwale under, as we rose and fell on the long seas, with our sails flapping, bulkheads creaking and screaming, and mainboom jig-jigging, as if it would have torn every thing to pieces. I could hear my friend Obed walking the deck, and whistling manfully for the sea-breeze, and exclaiming from time to time in his barbarous lingo, “Souffle, souffle, San Antonio.” But the saint had no bowels, and there we lay roasting until near ten o’clock in the forenoon. During all this period, Obed, who was shortsighted, as I learned afterwards, kept desiring his right arm, Paul Brandywine, to keep a bright look-out for the sea-breeze to windward, or rather to the eastward, for there was no wind--because he knowed it often times tumbling down right sudden and dangerous at this season about the corner of the island hereabouts; and the pride of the morning often brought a shower with it, fit to level a maize plat smooth as his hand. “No black clouds to windward yet, Paul?” Paul could see nothing, and the question was repeated three or four times. “There is a small black cloud about the size of my hand to windward, sir, right in the wake of the sun, just now, but it won’t come to any thing; I sees no signs of any wind.”