For a while the ship kept bucking and sidling like a vicious horse, the sails filling, now on one tack, now on another, and the boom swinging to and fro till the mast groaned aloud under the strain. Now and again, too, there would come a cloud of light sprays over the bulwark, and a heavy blow of the ship’s bows against the swell⁠—so much heavier weather was made of it by this great rigged ship than by my homemade, lopsided coracle, now gone to the bottom of the sea.

At every jump of the schooner, Red-cap slipped to and fro; but⁠—what was ghastly to behold⁠—neither his attitude nor his fixed teeth-disclosing grin was any way disturbed by this rough usage. At every jump, too, Hands appeared still more to sink into himself and settle down upon the deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting toward the stern, so that his face became, little by little, hid from me; and at last I could see nothing beyond his ear and the frayed ringlet of one whisker.