He still held the wheel, and I felt that he was timing Time, reckoning the passage of the minutes with each forward lunge and leeward roll of the _Ghost_.
"Go for'ard and hard alee without any noise," he said to me in a low voice.

"Clew up the topsails first.

Set men at all the sheets.

Let there be no rattling of blocks, no sound of voices.

No noise, understand, no noise." When all was ready, the word "hard-a-lee" was passed forward to me from man to man; and the _Ghost_ heeled about on the port tack with practically no noise at all.