But on the sixth day the gale broke, leaving our ship considerably strained, by which time, in spite of the current and the send of the sea, we had contrived to make forty miles of southing and easting, owing to our pertinacity in making sail and stretching away on a board at every lull.
It was shortly after this, on the Tuesday following the Friday on which the gale ended, that, it being my watch on deck from eight o'clock in the evening till midnight, I carried my pipe, an hour before my turn arrived, into the carpenter's cabin, which he shared with the boatswain, to give the poor fellow a bit of my company, for his broken leg kept him motionless. It was the second dogwatch, as we term the time, 'twixt six and eight o'clock, at sea, the evening indifferently fine, the wind over the starboard quarter, a quiet breeze, the ocean heaving in a lazy swell from the south, and the ship pushing forward at five knots an hour under fore and main-royals. The carpenter lay in a bunk, wearing a haggard face, and grizzly for lack of the razor. He was a very sensible, sober man, a good artificer, and had served under Lord Howe in the fleet equipped for the relief of Gibraltar, besides having seen a deal of cruising work in earlier times.
He was much obliged by my looking in upon him, and we speedily fell to yarning; he lighted a pipe, and I smoked likewise, whilst I sat upon his chest, taking in with a half-look round, such details as a rude sketch of the bo's'n's wife nailed to the bulkhead, the slush lamp swinging its dingy smoking flame to a cracked piece of looking-glass over against the carpenter's bed, an ancient horny copy of the Bible, with type pretty nigh as big as the letters of our ship's name, a bit of a shelf wherefrom there forked out the stems of some clay pipes, with other humble furniture such as a sailor is used to carry to sea with him.
After a little, the carpenter, whose name was Matthews, says to me, "I beg pardon, sir, but there's some talk going about among the men concerning the old Dutchman that was cursed last century. My mate, Joe Marner, told me that Jimmy--meaning the cabin-boy--was telling some of the crew this morning, that he heard the captain say the Dutchman's been sighted."