Thus ran my thoughts. After all these years, I put them dully and coldly; but they boiled in me then. They were as the electric fluid itself whilst I stood in the doorway of that cuddy, mechanically watching the great fabric of the ship glancing out green and violet and yellow to the lights of the storm over the bow.
Shortly after eleven the sky cleared in the south; the clouds rolled away in black masses into the north, and the moon shone out, and the sea was again beautiful with her light. A soft wind blew and the decks grew busy with the life of seamen’s figures running here and there, and pulling and dragging and making sail to the noise of hoarse cries and choruses. The steward lurched up to me, and his breath filled the atmosphere around with a smell of spirits. He said, with a hiccough: ‘You can turn in.’ So I went below and lay down, fully clothed, in my bunk, but not to sleep.
SHE DESCRIBES THE SEIZURE OF THE SHIP BY THE CONVICTS
My head was full of Tom, of that change into fierceness which I had noticed in his whispers, and I dwelt upon his sad, wild saying that I did not know his heart, by which he meant that his heart had been transformed by the wrong that had been done him and by his punishment and sufferings. Never had I felt madder than when I thought of him. I put my hands together, and prayed that if the convicts rose they would successfully seize the ship.
My blood was so hot and the heat of the atmosphere so great that I could not rest. I opened the porthole and put my face into it for the coolness of the air, and for a long while listened to the pleasant, rippling sounds of the water gently broken, and to the gushing of water from the decks and the noise of men’s voices high aloft, and sounding as though the tones came across the sea. The moon was on the other side, but the stars were again plentiful, many meteors sailed in delicate trails of light, and the sea-line ran black against the sheet lightning that played behind it. The dew-laden night-breath fanned my face and cooled me, and by this time having thought myself into some composure of mind I laid my head down and slept.
I was awakened by Frank; day had broken, and on looking through the porthole I saw that it was a fine clear morning, and that the ocean trembled with the brushing of a small wind. I might be sure that nothing had as yet happened; but I was so agitated, felt so cold and pale, that I expressly lingered, hoping to rally, till I suddenly heard the vulgar voice of Mr. Stiles bawling my name, on which I went out quickly.