noon
Next day it blows a clean , all but a bank of gray , very thin and still , -- about the size of that cloud you see through the side window , Tom , -- which lay just abeam of us . The sea , I thought , looked like a great purple pincushion , with a mast or two stuck in on the horizon for the pins . `` Jake 's poetry , '' the boys said that was . By noon that little gray bank had grown up thick , like a wall . By sundown the cap'n let his liquor alone , and kept the deck . By night we were in chop-seas , with a very ugly wind . `` Steer small , there ! ''