"We are some five hundred odd miles off that island by now," he said,
"and she's doing her thirteen knots handsome. All's well so far--but do
you know, I'd just as soon raise that point o' land as soon as
convenient."
"How so?" said I, bending on the line. "Expect some weather?"
"Mr. Dixon," said he, giving me a curious glance, "the sea is a queer
proposition, put it any ways. I've been a seafarin' man since I was big
as a minute, and I know the sea, and what's more, the Feel o' the sea.
Now, look out yonder. Nothin', hey? Nothin' but the same ol' skyline
we've watched all the way out. The glass is as steady as a steeple, and
this ol' hooker, I reckon, is as sound as the day she went off the ways.
But just the same if I were to home now, a-foolin' about Gloucester way
in my little dough-dish--d'ye know what? I'd put into port. I sure
would. Because why? Because I got the Feel o' the Sea, Mr. Dixon. I got
the Feel o' the Sea."
I had heard old skippers say something of this before, and I cited to
Hardenberg the experience of a skipper captain I once knew who had
turned turtle in a calm sea off Trincomalee. I ask him what this Feel of
the Sea was warning him against just now (for on the high sea any
premonition is a premonition of evil, not of good). But he was not
explicit.
"I don't know," he answered moodily, and as if in great perplexity,
coiling the rope as he spoke.
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