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That evening a great dun-colored cloud banked up in the west, and
an anxious man was Goodwin Hawtayne, for a third part of his crew
had been slain, and half the remainder were aboard the galleys,
so that, with an injured ship, he was little fit to meet such a
storm as sweeps over those waters. 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.


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