When the next flash came, I saw the other lookout man making his
short turns on the narrow space of bow deck, and was tempted to join
him; why, I do not know. I crept past the donkey-engine, holding fast to
it as I went, until I reached the iron gate that closes the narrow
passage to the bow deck. With two silver dollars in my teeth I staggered
across this rail-guarded plank, and when the next flash came I was
sitting at the feet of the lookout man with the two silver dollars in my
outstretched hand. He took the money, and let me crawl forward between
the anchors and the high bulwark of the bows.
The sensations which this position gave me were strange beyond
description. Darkness was thick around me; at one moment I was carried
upward until I felt that I should be lost in the black sky, and the next
moment the downward motion was so terrible that the blacker water at the
bottom of the sea seemed near. I cannot say that I enjoyed it, but I
could not give it up.
When the great bow rose, I stood up, and, looking over the bulwark,
tried to see either sky or water, but tried in vain, save when the
lightning revealed them both.
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