I didn't move, I didn't speak.
I watched the slant of the ship.

She was as still as if landed on the blocks in a dry dock--only she was like this," He held up his hand, palm under, the tips of the fingers inclined downwards.

"Like this," he repeated.

"I could see the line of the horizon before me, as clear as a bell, above her stem-head; I could see the water far off there black and sparkling, and still--still as a-pond, deadly still, more still than ever sea was before--more still than I could bear to look at.

Have you watched a ship floating head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old iron too rotten to stand being shored up?
Have you?
Oh yes, shored up?
I thought of that--I thought of every mortal thing; but can you shore up a bulkhead in five minutes--or in fifty for that matter?
Where was I going to get men that would go down below?
And the timber--the timber! Would you have had the courage to swing the maul for the first blow if you had seen that bulkhead?
Don't say you would: you had not seen it; nobody would.