Vinal was a good sailor; that is to say, he was not very liable to that ocean scourge, seasickness, and the few qualms he had suffered were by this time effectually frightened out of him. As darkness closed, he had lain down in his clothes; and flung from side to side till his bones ached with the incessant rolling of the bark, he listened sleeplessly to the hideous booming of the storm. Suddenly there came a roar so appalling, that he leaped out of his berth with terror. It seemed to him as if a Niagara had broken above the vessel, and was crushing her down to the nethermost abyss. The rush of waters died away. Then came the bellow of the speaking trumpet, the trampling of feet, the shouts of men, the hoarse fluttering of canvas. In a few moments he felt a change in the vessel's motion. She no longer rocked with a constant reel from side to side, but seemed flung about at random, hither and thither, at the mercy of the storm. She had been, in fact, within a hair's breadth of foundering. A huge wave, chasing on her wake, swelling huger and huger, towering higher and higher, had curled, at last, its black crest above her stern, and, breaking, fallen on her in a deluge. The captain, a Barnstable man of the go-ahead stamp, was brought at last to furl his foresail and lie to. Vinal, restless with his fear, climbed the narrow stairway which led up to the deck, and pushed open the door at the top; but a blast of wind and salt spray clapped it in his face, and would have knocked him to the foot of the steps, if he had not clung to the handrail. He groped his way as he could back to his berth. Here he lay for a quarter of an hour, when the captain came down, enveloped in oilcloths, and dripping like a Newfoundland dog just out of the water. Vinal emerged from his den, and presenting himself with his haggard face, and hair bristling in disorder, questioned the bedrenched commander touching the state of things on deck. But the latter was in a crusty and savage mood. "Hey! what is it?"--surveying the apparition by the light of the swinging lantern,--"well, you _be_ a beauty, I'll be damned if you ain't." "I did not ask you how I looked; I asked you about the weather." "Well, it ain't the sweetest night I ever see; but I guess you won't drown this time." "My friend," said Vinal, "learn to mend your way of speaking, and use a civil tongue." The captain stared at him, muttered an oath or two, and then turned away.