Something banging at the bulkhead close to my ear aroused me from a deep sleep in great alarm. The hole in which I lay was so pitchy dark that, even when I realised where I was, which took some little time, I fumbled¹ fruitlessly about for several minutes before I finally extricated³ myself. When at last I stood upright on the cuddy-deck, I saw the captain seated at the table writing. He looked up and growled⁴, "Now then, look lively! Didn't you hear, 'Man the windlass'?" Alas⁶! I knew no more what he meant than as if he had spoken in Hebrew; but I gathered somehow that I ought to be on deck. Up I scrambled⁸ into a bitter, snow-laden north-east wind and darkness that, but for the strange sheen of the falling flakes⁹, was almost Egyptian. Shivering as much with queer apprehensions¹⁰ as with cold, I hurried forrard, where I found the mate and Chips hard at work getting the hands out of the fo'lk'sle, and up on top of it, to where the two gaunt levers of the windlass made a blacker streak¹¹ in the prevailing¹² darkness. Tumbling up against Jem, the darky, he said, as well as his chattering¹⁴ teeth would allow, "Specs yo gotter haul back chain longer me, boy; yars a hook fer yer,"—putting into my hand, as he spoke⁷, a long iron hook with a cross-handle. Then, when at last the half-dead sailors began to work the levers, and the great clumsy windlass

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