The wind blew with an unendurable edge in the sting and bite of it.
The second mate and I, each with a rope girdling his waist to swing
by, stood muffled up to our noses under the lee of a square of canvas
seized to the mizzen shrouds. Presently he roared into my ear, "Sort
of a night for a pannikin of coffee, eh, Mr. Russell?" "Ay, ay, sir,"
I replied, and with that, liberating myself from the rope, I clawed my
way along the line of the hencoops--the decks sometimes sloping almost
up and down to the heavy weather _scends_ of the huge black
billows,--and descended into the midshipmen's berth. It was not the
first time I had made a cup of coffee for myself and the second mate in
the middle watch during cold weather. An old nurse who had lived in my
family for years had given me an apparatus consisting of a spirit-lamp
and a funnel-shaped contrivance of block tin, along with several pounds
of very good coffee, and with this I used to keep the second mate and
myself supplied with the real luxury of a hot and aromatic drink
during wet and frosty watches. The midshipmen's berth was a narrow
room down in the 'tween decks, bulkheaded off from the sides, fitted
with a double row of bunks, one on top of another, the lower beds
being about a foot above the deck.
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