When it was done, Jack sat, wrapped in blankets, out on the bowsprit, as sort of a Vagabond-wretch-figurehead, and smoked a pipe that Yevgeny had brought him. Queerly, he felt nothing at all. Big merchant ships, locked into huge air-filled boxes to lift them higher in the water, were being towed over the sand-banks, which were all cluttered with old spidery wrecks. Beyond that, the rhythm of the ocean subtly changed, as before a play, when a frilly overture gives way to the booming music of a Tragedy or History. It got darker and palpably colder, and those ships were set free from their boxes, and began to spread cloth before the wind, like canvas-merchants displaying their wares to an important buyer. The offerings were grudgingly accepted – the sails filled with air, became taut and smooth, and the ships accelerated toward the sea. Later, they came to Texel, and all the sailors paused in their chores to view the immense Ships of the Line of the Dutch Navy riding on the huge waves of the North Sea, their flags and banners swirling like colored smoke-clouds and their triple gun-decks frowning at England.