The Beautiful White Devil by Guy Boothby

After the exciting events in which I had been a participator that evening, it may not be a matter for surprise that, on going to bed, my night was a troubled one. Hour after hour I tumbled and tossed in my bunk, and with the first sign of day, finding sleep still impossible, dressed and went on deck. It was as lovely a morning as any man could wish to see, with a pale turquoise sky overhead, across which clouds of fleecy whiteness sped with extraordinary rapidity. A fine breeze hummed in the shrouds, and the peculiar motion of the schooner, combined with one glance over the side, was sufficient to convince me that a brisk sea was running. I walked aft, said "Good-morning! " to the officer of the watch, who was the same taciturn individual, with the scar upon his face, I have described earlier in the story, and then, partly from curiosity and partly from force of habit, took a squint at the compass card.

Our course was N. N. E. exactly, but as I did not know whether or not this was a bluff of some kind, such a circumstance told me but little. I therefore leaned against the taffrail, looked up at the canvas, bellying out like great balloons above my head, and resigned myself to my thoughts. It had an exhilarating, yet for some reason bewildering, effect upon me, that stretch of canvas standing out so white against the clear blue sky, the chasing clouds, the bright sunshine, the dancing, rolling sea, and the splashing of the water alongside. The schooner was evidently in a playful mood, for one moment she would be aiming her jib-boom at the sun and the next be dipping her nose down into the trough and sending a shower of spray rattling on the fo'c's'le like hail. Not a sail was in sight, though it was evident from the presence of a lookout in the fore-top, and the constant scrutiny of the southwestern horizon maintained by the officer of the watch, that one was momentarily expected.