It was midnight, mark you, when our watch began; and my turn at the helm now coming on was of course to be avoided. On some plausible³ pretense⁴, I induced our solitary⁵ watchmate to assume it; thus leaving myself untrammeled, and at the same time satisfactorily disposing of him. For being a rather fat fellow, an enormous consumer of "duff," and with good reason supposed to be the son of a farmer, I made no doubt, he would pursue his old course and fall to nodding over the wheel. As for the leader of the watch—our harpooner—he fell heir to the nest of old jackets, under the lee of the mizzen-mast, left nice and warm by his predecessor⁶.

 

The night was even blacker than we had anticipated; there was no trace of a moon; and the dark purple haze⁷, sometimes encountered at night near the Line, half shrouded⁸ the stars from view.

 

Waiting about twenty minutes after the last man of the previous watch had gone below, I motioned to Jarl, and we slipped our shoes from our feet. He then descended⁹ into the forecastle, and I sauntered aft toward the quarter-deck. All was still. Thrice did I pass my hand full before the face of the slumbering¹⁰ lubber at the helm, and right between him and the light of the binnacle.

 

Mark, the harpooneer, was not so easily sounded. I feared to approach him. He lay quietly, though; but asleep or awake, no more delay. Risks must be run, when time presses. And our ears were a pointer's to catch a sound.

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