In the morning of one specially warm night we three were sitting
immediately in front of the wheel-house, where an old Swedish
boatswain whom we called 'Frithiof the Dane' was at the wheel,
pretending that he could not hear our stories. Once or twice Frithiof
spun the spokes curiously, and Keller lifted his head from a long
chair to ask, 'What is it? Can't you get any steerage-way on her?'

'There is a feel in the water,' said Frithiof, 'that I cannot
understand. I think that we run downhills or somethings. She steers
bad this morning.'

Nobody seems to know the laws that govern the pulse of the big
waters. Sometimes even a landsman can tell that the solid ocean is
atilt, and that the ship is working herself up a long unseen slope;
and sometimes the captain says, when neither full steam nor fair
wind justifies the length of a day's run, that the ship is sagging
downhill; but how these ups and downs come about has not yet been
settled authoritatively.

'No, it is a following sea,' said Frithiof; 'and with a following
sea you shall not get good steerage-way.'

The sea was as smooth as a duck-pond, except for a regular oily
swell. As I looked over the side to see where it might be following
us from, the sun rose in a perfectly clear sky and struck the water
with its light so sharply that it seemed as though the sea should
clang like a burnished gong. The wake of the screw and the little
white streak cut by the log-line hanging over the stern were the only
marks on the water as far as eye could reach.