All night it blew in short fitful puffs, heeling the great cog over until the water curled over her lee bulwarks.

As the wind still freshened the yard was lowered half way down the mast in the morning.
Alleyne, wretchedly ill and weak, with his head still ringing from the blow which he had received, crawled up upon deck.

Water-swept and aslant, it was preferable to the noisome, rat-haunted dungeons which served as cabins.

There, clinging to the stout halliards of the sheet, he gazed with amazement at the long lines of black waves, each with its curling ridge of foam, racing in endless succession from out the inexhaustible west.

A huge sombre cloud, flecked with livid blotches, stretched over the whole seaward sky-line, with long ragged streamers whirled out in front of it.