Nothing loth I rose and stumbled towards the ladder, marvelling to find my hands and feet so unwieldy as I climbed; the higher I went the more the rolling and pitching of the ship grew on me, so that when at last I dragged myself out on deck it was no wonder to find the weather very blusterous and with, ever and anon, clouds of white spray lashing aboard out of the hissing dark with much wind that piped shrill and high in cordage and rigging.
Being sheltered by the high bulwark hard beside the quarter-deck ladder, I leaned awhile to stare about me and drink in great draughts of sweet, clean air, so that in a little my head grew easier and the heaviness passed from me. Ever and anon the moon peeped through wrack of flying cloud, by whose pale beam I caught glimpses of bellying sails towering aloft with their indefinable mass of gear and rigging, and the heel and lift of her looming forecastle as the stately vessel rose to the heaving seas or plunged in a white smother of foam.
"She rides well, Mart'n!" roared Godby in my ear. "Aha, here's duck of a ship, pal!"
"Where's Adam?" I questioned.
"To'-gallant poop, Mart'n. Lord love ye, it's little sleep he's had since we hove anchor. Hark'ee, pal--he's got it into his head as we'm being dogged!"
"Dogged, man--by what?"
"By that same great black ship as fouled us--he has so, pal--roast me else! But come your ways." So saying, Godby climbed to the quarter-deck and I after him, and mounting the poop-ladder, presently came on Penfeather, peering hard over our lee.
"Ha, is it you, shipmate!" says he, drawing me out of the wind. "Look yonder, d'ye see aught of a rag o' sail, Martin?" Following his pointing finger, I stared away into the distance across a tumbling spume of waters vague in the half-light. "D'ye glimpse aught, Martin?"
"Nothing, Adam!"
"Wait for the moon, shipmate--now, look yonder!" As the light grew, I swept the distant horizon with my eyes until, all at once against the night, I saw the sheen of distant canvas that gleamed and was gone again as a cloud veiled the moon. "You saw it, Martin?"
"Plainly!" says I, whereupon he sprang away to the men at the helm; came the hoarse roar of speaking-trumpet, and decks and waist below seemed alive with scurrying, dim figures; and now was a chorus of shouts and yo-ho-ing as the "Faithful Friend," obedient to his commands, swung off upon an altered course.
"Godby," says Adam, beckoning us where stood the compass or bittacle, "look'ee, as she bears now we should be nigh enough yon curst ship to learn more of her by peep o' dawn."