Upon reaching the launch, the captain's first care was to satisfy
himself as to the well-being and comfort of the poor wounded fellows
aboard her; but the doctor had already attended to this matter, with the
result that they were as comfortable as the utmost care and forethought
could render them. The master, meanwhile, had been ascertaining the
exact latitude and longitude of the spot where the frigate had gone
down, and he now communicated the result of his calculations to the
captain, who thereupon gave orders for the boats to steer southwest on a
speed trial for the day, the leading boat to heave-to at sunset and wait
for the rest to close. I had not the remotest notion as to the meaning
of this somewhat singular order, but my obvious duty was to execute it;
so I forthwith made sail upon the gig, and a very few minutes sufficed
to demonstrate that we were the fastest boat of the whole squadron. Nor
was this at all surprising, for the gig was not an ordinary service
boat; she was the captain's own private property, having been built to
order from his own design, with a special view to the development of
exceptional sailing powers, boat-sailing being quite a hobby with him.
She was a splendid craft of her kind, measuring thirty feet in length,
with a beam of six feet, and she pulled six oars. She was a most
beautiful model of the whale-boat type, double-ended, with quite an
unusual amount of sheer fore and aft, which gave her a fine, bold,
buoyant bow and stern; moreover, these were covered in with light
turtle-back decks, that forward measuring six feet in length, while the
after turtle-back measured five feet from the stern-post. She was
fitted with a keel nine inches deep amidships, tapering off to four
inches deep at each end; was rigged as a schooner, with standing fore
and main lug and a small jib, and, with her ordinary crew on board and
sitting to windward, required no ballast even in a fresh breeze. Small
wonder, therefore, was it that, having such a boat under us, we had run
the rest of the fleet out of sight by midday, the wind still blowing
strong, although it was moderating rapidly.
The first lieutenant was, like the captain, fond of inventing and
designing things, but his speciality took the form of logs for
determining the speed of craft through the water; and in the course of
his experiments he had provided each of the frigate's boats with an
ingenious spring arrangement which, attached to an ordinary fishing-line
with a lead weight secured to its outer end, which was continuously
towed astern, registered the speed of the boat with a very near approach
to perfect accuracy.
The day passed uneventfully away, the wind moderating steadily all the
time, and the sun breaking through considerably before noon, enabling me
to secure a meridian altitude wherefrom to compute my latitude. The
sea, too, was going down, and when the sun set that night the sky wore a
very promising fine-weather aspect. As the great golden orb vanished
below the horizon we rounded the boat to, lowered our sails, and moored
her to a sea anchor made of the oars lashed together in a bundle with
the painter bent on to them. And later on, when it fell dark, we
lighted a lantern and hoisted it to our fore-masthead, as a beacon for
which the other boats might steer. The gig had behaved splendidly all
through the day, never shipping so much as a single drop of water, and
now that she was riding to her oars she took the sea so easily and
buoyantly that I felt as safe as I had ever done aboard the poor old
_Althea_ herself, and unhesitatingly allowed all hands to turn in as
best they could in the bottom of the boat, undertaking to keep a lookout
myself until the other boats had joined company.
The first boat to make her appearance was the service gig in charge of
Mr Flowers, the third lieutenant; she ranged up alongside and hove-to
about two hours after sunset, soon afterwards following our example by
throwing out a sea anchor. Then came the first and second cutters, in
command of the first and second lieutenants; the first cutter arriving
about an hour after Mr Flowers, while the second cutter appeared about
a quarter of an hour later. The launch followed about half an hour
astern of the second cutter; but this was not to be wondered at, the
former being rather deep, owing to the very generous supply of water
that the doctor had insisted on carrying for the comfort of the wounded.
Then, some three-quarters of an hour later, came the jolly-boat in
charge of the boatswain; and finally the dinghy, carrying four hands and
in charge of my friend and fellow-mid, Jack Keene, turned up close upon
midnight.
Long ere this, however, we had each in succession spoken the launch,
reporting the distance that we had traversed up to sunset. And, with
the data thus supplied, the master had gone to work upon a calculation
which formed the basis of a sort of table showing the ratio of the
speeds of the several boats, with the aid of which the officer in charge
of each boat could estimate with a moderate degree of accuracy the
position of each of the other boats at any given moment--so long, that
is to say, as the wind held fair enough to allow the boats to steer a
given course. A copy of this table was then furnished to the officer in
command of each boat, after which the captain ordered Mr Flowers to
make the best of his way to Barbadoes, with instructions to report the
loss of the frigate immediately upon his arrival, with a request to the
senior naval officer that a craft of some sort might be forthwith
despatched in search of the other boats. Similar instructions were next
given to me, except that my port of destination was Bermuda. Of course
we each carried a written as well as a verbal message to the senior
naval officer of the port to which we were bound; and equally, of
course, it was impressed upon us both that if we happened to encounter a
friendly craft _en route_, and could induce her to undertake the search,
it would be so much the better. Having received these instructions, and
taken young Lindsay out of the launch, which was a trifle over-crowded,
I at once made sail and parted company, the occupants of the other boats
giving us the encouragement of a farewell cheer as we did so; they also
making sail at the same time on a west-south-westerly course, which
would afford them about an even chance of being picked up by a craft
either from Bermuda or Barbadoes; while, in the event of their being
found by neither, they stood a very good chance of hitting off one or
another of the Leeward Islands.
For the remainder of that night we sped gaily onward, with the wind
about two points free, making splendid progress; although I am bound to
admit that, with the height of sea and the strength of wind that still
prevailed, there were moments when the task of sailing the boat became
exciting enough to satisfy the cravings of even the most exacting
individual. Lindsay and I relieved each other at the tiller, watch and
watch, with one hand forward to keep a lookout ahead and to leeward, the
rest of the poor fellows being so thoroughly worn out by their long
spell at the pumps that rest and sleep was an even more imperative
necessity for them than it was for us.
By the time of sunrise the wind had dwindled away to a topgallant
breeze, with a corresponding reduction in the amount of sea; we were
therefore enabled to shake out the double reef that we had thus far been
compelled to carry in our canvas, while the aspect of the sky was more
promising than it had been for several days past. The weather was now
as favourable as we could possibly wish, the wind being just fresh
enough to send us along at top speed, gunwale-to, under whole canvas,
while the sea was going down rapidly. But, as the day wore on, the
improvement in the weather progressed just a little too far; it became
even finer than we wished it, the wind continuing to drop steadily,
until by noon we were sliding over the long, mountainous swell at a
speed of barely four knots, with the hot sun beating down upon us far
too ardently to be pleasant. Needless to say, we kept a sharp lookout
for a sail all through the day, but saw nothing; the flying-fish that
sparkled out from the ridges of the swell and went skimming away to port
and starboard, gleaming as brilliantly in the strong sunlight as a
handful of new silver dollars, being the only objects to break the
solitude that environed us. By sunset that day the wind had died
completely out, leaving the ocean a vast surface of slow-moving, glassy
undulations, and I was reluctantly compelled to order the canvas to be
taken in, the masts to be struck, and the oars to be thrown out. Then,
indeed, as the night closed down upon us and the stars came winking, one
by one, out of the immeasurable expanse of darkening blue above us, the
silence of the vast ocean solitude that hemmed us in became a thing that
might be felt. So oppressive was it that, as by instinct, our
conversation gradually dwindled to the desultory exchange of a few
whispered remarks, uttered at lengthening intervals, until it died out
altogether; while the profound stillness of air and ocean seemed to
become accentuated rather than broken by the measured roll of the oars
in the rowlocks, and the tinkling lap of the water under the bows and
along the bends of the boat. We pulled four oars only instead of six,
in order that we might have two relays, or watches, who relieved each
other every four hours. The men pulled a long, steady, easy stroke, of
a sort that enabled them to keep on throughout the watch without undue
fatigue, by taking a five minutes' spell of rest about once an hour; but
it was weary work for the poor fellows, after all, and our progress soon
became provokingly slow.
About three bells in the middle watch that night, as I half sat, half
reclined in the stern-sheets, drowsily steering by a star, and
occasionally glancing over my shoulder at the ruddy, glowing sickle of
the rising moon, then in her last quarter, we were all suddenly startled
by the sound of a loud, deep-drawn sigh that came to us from somewhere
off the larboard bow, apparently at no great distance from the boat; and
while we sat wondering and listening, with poised oars, the sound was
repeated close aboard of us, but this time on our starboard quarter,
accompanied by a soft washing of water; and turning sharply, I beheld,
right in the shimmering, golden wake of the moon, a huge, black,
shapeless, gleaming bulk noiselessly upheave itself out of the black
water and slowly glide up abreast of us until it was alongside and all
but within reach of our oars.
"A whale!" whispered one of the men, in tones that were a trifle
unsteady from the startling surprise of the creature's sudden
appearance.
"Ay," replied the man next him, "and that was another that we heard just
now; bull and cow, most likely. I only hopes they haven't got a calf
with 'em, because if they have, the bull may take it into his head to
attack us; they're mighty short-tempered sometimes when they have young
uns cruisin' in company! I minds one time when I was aboard the old
_Walrus_--a whaler sailin' out of Dundee--that was afore I was pressed."
Another long sigh-like expiration abruptly interrupted the yarn, and
close under our bows there rose another leviathan, so closely indeed
that, unless it was a trick of the imagination, I felt a slight tremor
thrill through the boat, as though he had touched us! Involuntarily I
glanced over the side; and it was perhaps well that I did so, for there,
right underneath the boat, far down in the black depths, I perceived a
small, faint, glimmering patch of phosphorescence, that, as I looked,
grew larger and more distinct, until, in the course of a very few
seconds, it assumed the shape of another monster rising plumb underneath
us.
"Back water, men! back water, for your lives! There is one of them
coming up right under our keel!" I cried; and, at the words, the men
dashed their oars into the water and we backed out of the way, just in
time to avoid being hove out of the water and capsized, this fellow
happening to come up with something very like a rush. Meanwhile, others
were rising here and there all around us, until we found ourselves
surrounded by a school of between twenty and thirty whales. It was a
rather alarming situation for us; for although the creatures appeared
perfectly quiet and well-disposed, there was no knowing at what moment
one of them might gather way and run us down, either intentionally or
inadvertently; while there was also the chance that another might rise
beneath us so rapidly as to render it impossible for us to avoid him.
One of the men suggested that we should endeavour to frighten them away
by making a noise of some sort; but the former whaler strongly vetoed
this proposition, asserting--whether rightly or wrongly I know not--that
if we startled them the chances were that those nearest at hand would
turn upon us and destroy the boat. We therefore deemed it best to
maintain a discreet silence; and in this condition of unpleasant
suspense we remained, floating motionless for a full half-hour, the
whales meanwhile lying as motionless as ourselves, when suddenly a stir
seemed to thrill through the whole herd, and all in a moment they got
under way and went leisurely off in a northerly direction, to our great
relief. We gave them a full quarter of an hour to get well out of our
way, and then the oars dipped into the water once more, and we resumed
our voyage.
At daybreak the atmosphere was still as stagnant as it had been all
through the night, the surface of the ocean being unbroken by the
faintest ripple, save where, about a mile away, broad on our starboard
bow, the fin of a solitary shark lazily swimming athwart our course
turned up a thin, blue, wedge-shaped ripple as he swam. There was,
however, a faint, scarcely perceptible mistiness in the atmosphere that
led me to hope we might get a small breeze from somewhere--I little
cared where--before the day grew many hours older. At nine o'clock I
secured an excellent set of sights for my longitude,--having taken the
precaution to set my watch by the ship's chronometer before parting
company with the launch,--and it was depressing to find, after I had
worked out my calculations, how little progress we had made during the
twenty-one hours since the previous noon. As the morning wore on the
mistiness that I had observed in the atmosphere at daybreak passed away,
but the sky lost its rich depth of blue, while the sun hung aloft, a
dazzling but rayless globe of palpitating fire. A change of some sort
was brewing, I felt certain, and I was somewhat surprised that, with
such a sky above us, the atmosphere should remain so absolutely
stagnant.
As the day wore on, the thin, scarcely perceptible veil of vapour that
had dimmed the richness of the sky tints in the early morning gradually
thickened and seemed to be assuming somewhat of a distinctness of shape.
I just succeeded in securing the meridian altitude of the sun, for the
determination of our latitude, but that was all. Half an hour after
noon the haze had grown so dense that the great luminary showed through
it merely as a shapeless blur of pale, watery radiance, and within
another hour he had disappeared altogether from the overcast sky. Still
the wind failed to come to our help; the atmosphere seemed to be dead,
so absolutely motionless was it; and although the sun had vanished
behind the murky vapours that were stealthily and imperceptibly veiling
the firmament, the heat was so distressing that the perspiration
streamed from every pore, the manipulation of the oars grew more and
more languid, and at length, as though actuated by a common impulse, the
men gave in, declaring that they were utterly exhausted and could do no
more. And I could well believe their assertion, for even I, whose
exertions were limited to the steering of the boat, felt that even such
slight labour was almost too arduous to be much longer endured. The
oars were accordingly laid in, we went to dinner, and then the men flung
themselves down in the bottom of the boat, and, with their pipes
clenched between their teeth, fell fast asleep, an example which was
quickly followed by Lindsay and myself, despite all our efforts to the
contrary.
When I awoke it was still breathlessly calm, and I thought for a moment
that night had fallen, so dark was it; but upon consulting my watch I
found that it still wanted nearly an hour to sunset. But, heavens! what
a change had taken place in the aspect of the weather during the four
hours or so that I had lain asleep in the stern-sheets of the boat! It
is quite possible that, had I remained awake, I should scarcely have
been aware of more than the mere fact that the sky was steadily assuming
an increasingly sombre and threatening aspect; but, awaking as I did to
the abrupt perception of the change that had been steadily working
itself out during the previous four hours, it is not putting it too
strongly to say that I was startled. For whereas my last conscious
memory of the weather, before succumbing to the blandishments of the
drowsy god, had been merely that of a lowering, overcast sky, that might
portend anything, but probably meant no more than a sharp thunder-
squall, I now awakened to the consciousness that the firmament above
consisted of a vast curtain of frowning, murky, black-grey cloud,
streaked or furrowed in a very remarkable manner from about east-south-
east to west-nor'-west, the lower edges of the clouds presenting a
curious frayed appearance, while the clouds themselves glowed here and
there with patches of lurid, fiery red, as though each bore within its
bosom a fiercely burning furnace, the ruddy light of which shone through
in places. I had never before beheld a sky like it, but its aspect was
sufficiently alarming to convince the veriest tyro in weather-lore that
something quite out of the common was brewing; so I at once awoke the
slumbering crew to inquire whether any of them could read the signs and
tell me what we might expect.
The newly-awakened men yawned, stretched their arms above their heads,
and dragged themselves stiffly up on the thwarts, gazing with looks of
wonder and alarm at the portentous sky that hung above them.
"Well, if we was in the Chinese seas, I should say that a typhoon was
goin' to bust out shortly," observed one of them--a grizzled, mahogany-
visaged old salt, who had seen service all over the world. "But," he
continued, "they don't have typhoons in the Atlantic, not as ever I've
heard say."
"No, they don't have typhoons here, but they has hurricanes, which I
take to mean pretty much the same thing," remarked another.
"You are right, Tom," said I, thus put upon the scent, as it were, "a
Chinese typhoon and a West Indian hurricane are the same thing under
different names. A third name for them is `cyclone'; and as this
threatening sky seems to remind Dunn so powerfully of a Chinese typhoon,
depend upon it we are going to have a taste of a West Indian hurricane,
or cyclone. I have read somewhere that they frequently originate out
here in the heart of the Atlantic."
"If we're agoin' to have a typhoon, or a hurricane, or a cyclone--
whichever you likes to call it--all I say is, `The Lord ha' mercy upon
us,'" remarked Dunn. "Big ships has all their work cut out to weather
one o' them gales; so what are we agoin' to do in this here open boat,
I'd like to know?"
"Have you ever been through a typhoon, Dunn?" I asked.
"Yes, sir, I have, and more than one of 'em," was the reply. "I was
caught in one off the Paracels, in the old _Audacious_ frigate,--as fine
a sea-boat as ever was launched,--and, in less time than it takes to
tell of it, we was dismasted and hove down on our beam-ends; and it took
us all our time to keep the hooker afloat and get her into Hong-Kong
harbour. And the very next year I was catched again--in the Bashee
Channel, this time--in the _Lively_ schooner, of six guns. We knowed it
was comin'; it gived us good warnin' and left us plenty of time to get
ready for it; so Mr Barker--the lieutenant in command--gived orders to
send the yards and both topmasts down on deck, and rig in the jib-boom;
and then he stripped her down to a close-reefed boom foresail. But we
capsized--reg'larly `turned turtle'--when the gale struck us, and only
five of us lived to tell the tale. As to this here boat, if a hurricane
anything at all like them Chinee typhoons gets hold of her, why, we
shall just be blowed clean away out o' water and up among the clouds!
And that's just what's goin' to happen, if signs counts for anything."
Wherewith the speaker thrust both hands into his trouser pockets,
disgustedly spat a small ocean of tobacco-juice overboard, and subsided
into gloomy silence.
It was a sufficiently alarming retrospect, in all conscience, to which
we had just listened, and the prophetic utterance wherewith it had been
wound up, while powerfully suggestive of a highly novel and picturesque
experience in store for us, was certainly not attractive enough to cause
us to look forward to its fulfilment with undisturbed serenity;
nevertheless, I did not feel like tamely giving in without making some
effort to save the boat and the lives with which I had been entrusted,
so I set myself seriously to consider how we could best utilise such
time as might be allowed us, in making some sort of preparation to meet
the now confidently-expected outburst. I looked over our resources, and
found that they consisted, in the main, of eight oars, two boat-hooks,
two masts, two yards, three sails, half a coil of two-inch rope that
some thoughtful individual had pitched into the boat when getting her
ready for launching, half a coil of ratline and two large balls of spun-
yarn, due to the forethought of the same or some other individual, a
painter some ten fathoms long, and the boat's anchor, together with the
gratings, stretchers, and other fittings belonging to the boat, and a
few oddments that might or might not prove useful.
Was it possible to do anything with these? After considering the matter
carefully I thought it was. The greatest danger to which we were likely
to be exposed seemed to me to consist in our being swamped by the flying
spindrift and scud-water or by the breaking seas, and if we could by any
means contrive to keep the water out there was perhaps a bare chance
that we might be able to weather the gale. And, after a little further
consideration, I thought that what I desired to do might possibly be
accomplished by means of the boat's sails, which were practically new,
and made of very light, but closely woven canvas, that ought to prove
water-tight. So, having unfolded my ideas to the men, we all went to
work with alacrity to put them to the test of actual practice.
Of course it was utterly useless to think of scudding before the gale;
our only hope of living through what was impending depended upon our
ability to keep the boat riding bows-on to the sea, and to do this it
became necessary for us to improvise a sea anchor again. This was
easily done by lashing together six of our eight oars in a bundle, three
of the blades at one end and three at the other, with the boat anchor
lashed amidships to sink the oars somewhat in the water and give them a
grip of it. A span, made by doubling a suitable length of our two-inch
rope, was bent on to the whole affair, and the boat's painter was then
bent on to the span, when the apparatus was launched overboard, and our
sea anchor was ready for service.
Our next task was to cut the two lug-sails adrift from their yards. The
mainsail was then doubled in half, and one end spread over the fore
turtle-back and drawn taut. Over this, outside the boat and under her
keel, we then passed a length of our two-inch rope, girding the boat
with it and confining the fore end of the sail to the turtle-back, when,
with the aid of one of the stretchers, we were able to heave this girth-
rope so taut as to render it impossible for the sail to blow away. But
before heaving it taut, we passed a second girth-rope round the boat
over the after turtle-back, next connecting both girth-ropes together by
lengths of rope running fore and aft along the outside of the boat
underneath the edge of the top strake. The doubled mainsail was then
strained taut across the boat, and its edges tucked underneath the fore-
and-aft lines outside the boat; the foresail was treated in the same
way, but with its fore edge overlapped by about a foot of the after edge
of the mainsail. Our girth-ropes were then hove taut, with the finished
result that we had a canvas deck covering the boat from the fore turtle-
back to within about six feet of the after one. The edges of the sails
were next turned up and secured by seizings on either side, and our deck
was complete. But, as it then stood, I was not satisfied with it, for
at the after extremity of it there was an opening some six feet long,
and as wide as the boat, through which a very considerable quantity of
water might enter--quite enough, indeed, to swamp the boat. And with
our canvas deck lying flat, as it then was, there was no doubt that very
large quantities of water would wash over it, and pour down through the
opening, should the sea run heavily. Our deck needed to be sloped
upward from the forward to the after end of the boat, so that any water
which might break over it would flow off on either side before reaching
the opening to which I have referred. We accordingly laid the boat's
mainmast along the thwarts fore and aft, amidships, and lashed the heel
firmly to the middle of the foremost thwart. Then, by lashing our two
longest stretchers together, we made a crutch for the head or after end
of the mast to rest in; when, by placing this crutch upright in the
stern-sheets against the back-board, we were able to raise the mast
underneath the sails until it not only formed a sort of ridge-pole,
converting the sails into a sloping roof, but it also strained the
canvas as tight as a drum-head, rendering it so much the less liable to
blow away, while it at the same time afforded a smooth surface for the
water to pour off, and it also possessed the further advantage that it
gave us a little more headroom underneath the canvas deck or roof. This
completed our preparations--none too soon, for it was now rapidly
growing dark, and the light of our lantern was needed while putting the
finishing touches to our work.
Our task accomplished, we of course at once extinguished our lantern,--
for candles were scarce with us,--and we then for the first time became
aware of the startling rapidity with which the night seemed to have
fallen; for with the extinguishment of the lantern we found ourselves
enwrapped in darkness so thick that it could almost be felt. This,
however, proved to be only transitory, for with the lapse of a few
minutes our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and we were then able
not only to discern the shapes of the vast pile of clouds that
threateningly overhung us, but also their reflections in the oil-smooth
water, the latter made visible by the dull, ruddy glow emanating from
the clouds themselves, which was even more noticeable now than it had
been before nightfall, and which was so unnatural and appalling a sight
that I believe there was not one of us who was not more or less affected
by it. It was the first time that I had ever beheld such a sight, and I
am not ashamed to confess that the sensation it produced in me was, for
a short time, something very nearly akin to terror, so dreadful a
portent did it seem to be, and so profoundly impressed was I with our
utter helplessness away out there in mid-ocean, in that small, frail
boat, with no friendly shelter at hand, and nothing to protect us from
the gathering fury of the elements--nothing, that is to say, but the
hand of God; and--I say it with shame--I thought far too little of Him
in those days.
Not the least trying part of it all was the painful tension of the
nerves produced by the suspense--the enforced _waiting_ for the awful
ordeal that lay before us. There was nothing for us to do, nothing to
distract our attention from that awful, threatening sky, that looked as
though it might momentarily be expected to burst into a devastating
flame that would destroy the world! Some of the men, indeed, frankly
avowed that the sight was too terrible for them, and crept away under
the canvas, where they disposed themselves in the bottom of the boat,
and strove to while away the time in sleep.
At length--it would be about the close of the second dog-watch--we
became conscious that the swell, which had almost entirely subsided, was
gathering weight again, coming this time out from the north-west. At
first the heave was only barely perceptible, but within half an hour it
had grown into a succession of long, steep undulations, running at right
angles athwart the old swell, causing the boat to heave and sway with a
singularly uneasy movement, and frequent vicious, jerky tugs at her
painter. Then we noticed that the clouds--which had hitherto been
motionless, or so nearly so that their movement was not to be detected--
were working with a writhing motion, as though they were chained giants
enduring the agonies of some dreadful torture, while the awful ruddy
light which they emitted glowed with a still fiercer and more lurid
radiance, lighting up the restlessly heaving ocean until it burned like
the flood of Phlegethon. Anon there appeared a few scattered shreds of
smoky scud speeding swiftly athwart the fiery canopy, and almost
immediately afterwards, with a low, weird, wailing sound, there swept
over us a scurrying blast that came and was gone again in a second. It
came out from the north-west, and judging that this was probably the
direction from which the gale itself would come, we at once rigged out
over the stern one of the two oars remaining in the boat, and swept the
bows of the gig round until they pointed due north-west. Scarcely had
we accomplished this when a second scuffle came whistling down upon us
from the same direction, and before it had swept out of hearing astern
there arose a low moaning to windward, that increased in strength and
volume with appalling rapidity. The sky suddenly grew black as ink
ahead, a lengthening line of ghostly white appeared stretching along the
horizon ahead and bearing down upon us with frightful speed; the moan
grew into a deep, thunderous, howling roar, and from that to a yell
which might have issued from the throats of a million fiends in torment;
the white wall of foam and the yelling fury of wind struck us at the
same instant; and the next thing I knew was that I was lying flat in the
stern-sheets, hatless, and with my face stinging as though it had been
cut with a whip; while the boat trembled and quivered from stem to stern
with the scourging of wind and water, and the spray blew in a continuous
sheet over the opening above me and into the sea astern, not a drop
falling into the boat. The long-expected hurricane was upon us; and now
all that remained was to see how long our frail craft could withstand
the onslaught of the terrific forces arrayed against her.