It was a bad ship, they said, to be sick on board of, for no such thing as brandy was allowed in the old Priscilla.

Still I am sure I tasted some before I fell into a state of semi-insensibility.

As in a trance I heard Temple's moans, and the captain's voice across the gusty wind, and the forlorn crunching of the ship down great waves.

The captain's figure was sometimes stooping over us, more great-coats were piled on us; sometimes the wind whistled thinner than one fancies the shrieks of creatures dead of starvation and restless, that spend their souls in a shriek as long as they can hold it on, say nursery-maids; the ship made a truce with the waters and grunted; we took two or three playful blows, we were drenched with spray, uphill we laboured, we caught the moon in a net of rigging, away we plunged; we mounted to plunge again and again.

I reproached the vessel in argument for some imaginary inconsistency.