Ishmael took tea with the old captain, who came into the saloon and sat down in a perfectly renovated toilet, as if nothing had happened.

But when I say they took tea, I mean that they took quite as much of it up their sleeves and down their bosoms as into their mouths.

Drinking tea in a rolling ship is a sloppy operation.

After that the captain produced a chess-board, ingeniously arranged for sea-service, and the two gentlemen spent the evening in a mimic warfare that ended in a drawn battle.

"The gale seems to be subsiding. The motion of the ship has not been so violent for the last half hour, I think," said Ishmael, as they arose from the table.

"No; if it had been, we could not have played chess, even on this boxed board," was the reply.

"I hope we shall have fine weather now. What do you say, captain?"

"I say as I said before. I am a passenger, and the weather is nothing to me. But if you expect we are going to have fine weather because the wind has lulled--humph!"

"We shall not, then?"

"We shall have a twister, that is what we shall have--and before many hours. And I shouldn't wonder if we had a storm of snow and sleet to cap off with. Good-night, sir!" And with this consoling prophecy the old man withdrew.

Ishmael went to his berth and slept soundly until morning. When he awoke he found the ship rolling, pitching, tossing, leaping, falling, and fairly writhing and twisting like a living creature in mortal agony.

He fell out of his berth, pitched into his clothes, slopped his face and hands, raked his hair, and tumbled on deck. In other words, by sleight of hand and foot, he made a sea-toilet and went up.

What a night!

The sky black as night; the sea lashed into a foam as white as snow; the waves running mountain high from south to north; the wind blowing a hurricane from east to west; the ship subjected to this cross action, pitching onward in semicircular jerks, deadly sickening to see and feel.

"I suppose this is what you call a 'twister,'" said Ishmael, reeling towards the old captain, who was already on deck.

"Yes; just as I told you! You see that gale blew from the south for about forty-eight hours and got the sea up running north. And then, before the sea had time to subside, the wind chopped round and now blows from due east. And the ship is rolled from side to side by the waves and tossed from stem to stern by the wind. And between the two actions she is regularly twisted, and that is the reason why the sailors call this sort of thing a 'twister.' And this is not the worst of it. This east wind will be sure to blow up a snowstorm. We shall have it on the Banks."

"This has gone beyond a gale. I should call this a hurricane," said Ishmael.

"Hurricane? hurricane? Bless you, sir, no, sir! capful of wind!

capful of wind!" said the old man doggedly.

Nevertheless Ishmael noticed that the ship's captain looked anxious and gave his orders in short, peremptory tones.

The predicted snowstorm did not come on during that short winter's day, however. The "twister" "twisted" vigorously; twisted the ship nearly in two; twisted the souls, or rather the stomachs, nearly out of the bodies of the seasick victims. Even the well-pickled "old salt," Captain Mountz, felt uncomfortable. And it was just as much as Ishmael could do to keep himself up and avoid succumbing to illness. Those two were the last of the passengers that attempted to keep up. And they were very glad when night came and gave them an excuse for retiring.

The predicted snowstorm came on about midnight. When Ishmael dressed and struggled out of his stateroom in the morning, he found it just the nearest thing to an impossibility to go up on deck. The wind was still blowing a hurricane; the sea leaping in the wildest waves; the ship pitching, tossing, and jerking as before; and in addition to all this, the snow was falling thick and fast, and freezing as it fell, and every part of the deck and rigging was covered with a slippery, shining coating of ice.

Those who find it dangerous to walk on a motionless pavement in sleety weather may now imagine what is was to climb the ice-sheathed steps of this pitching ship.

Ishmael managed to get up on deck somehow; but he found the place deserted of all except the man at the wheel and the officer of the watch. Even the old sea lion, Captain Mountz, was among the missing.

There was little to be seen. He stood on the deck of a tossing ship of ice, in the midst of a high wind, a boiling sea, and a storm of snow; he could not discern an object a foot in advance of him.

And so, after a few words with the well-wrapped-up officer of the watch, he went below to look after the companions of his voyage.

Judge Merlin and Mr. Brudenell, like all the other passengers, were so ill as still to hate the sight of a human being. Leaving them in the care of the stateroom steward, Ishmael went to see after his old retainer. The professor was up, clothed, and in his right mind.

"You see I made an effort, Mr. Ishmael, sir, and a successful one, so far as getting on my feet was concerned. When I woke up this morning it occurred to me, like a reproach, that I had come with you, sir, to wait on you and not to be waited on by you--which latter arrangement was a sort of turning things topsy-turvy--"

"I ding sho doo," interrupted the German Jew, whose name was Isaacs.

"And so," continued the professor, "I made an effort to get up and do my duty, and I find myself much better for it."

"I am glad you are well enough to be up, Morris, but indeed, you need have suffered no twinges of conscience on my account," said Ishmael, smiling.

"I know your kindness, sir, and that makes it more incumbent on me to do my duty by you. Well, sir, I've been to your stateroom; but finding you gone, and everything dancing a hornpipe there, I tried to get up on deck to you, but there, sir, I failed. And, besides, while I was doing my best, a stout old gentleman, a sea captain I take him to be, blasted my eyes, and ordered me to go below and not break my blamed neck. And so I did."

"That was Captain Mountz. He meant you well, Morris. You did quite right to obey him."

Soon after this Ishmael went to his stateroom, took a volume of Shakspeare, and then ensconsed himself in a corner of the saloon, where he sat and read until dinner-time.

The progress of the steamer was very slow. The day passed heavily.

And again when night came everyone was glad to go to bed and to sleep.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WRECK.

And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the tramping surf, On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her sides, Like the horns of an angry bull.

--_Wreck of the "Hesperus."_

When Ishmael awoke in the morning he was surprised to find that the motion of the ship was much lessened. And when he went up on deck he was pleased to discover that the wind had fallen and the sea was going down.

There was but one trouble--the thick fog; but that might be expected on the Banks of Newfoundland.

Old Captain Mountz was pacing up and down the deck with the firm tread of a man who felt himself on solid ground.

"Good-morning, captain! A pleasant change this," was Ishmael's greeting.

"Oh, aye, yes! for as long as it will last," was the dampening reply.

"Why, you don't think the wind will rise again, do you?"

"Don't I? I tell you before many hours we shall have a strong sou'wester, that will do its best to drive us ashore on these Banks," was the discouraging answer.

But by this time Ishmael had grown to understand the old sailor, and to know that he generally talked by the "rules of contrary"; for whereas he would not permit the late gale to be anything more than a "capful of wind," he now declared the fine weather to be nothing less than the forerunner of a hurricane.