A Pirate of the Caribbees, Page 3

  CHAPTER THREE.

  THE GIG IS CAUGHT IN A HURRICANE.

  Upon reaching the launch, the captain's first care was to satisfyhimself as to the well-being and comfort of the poor wounded fellowsaboard her; but the doctor had already attended to this matter, with theresult that they were as comfortable as the utmost care and forethoughtcould render them. The master, meanwhile, had been ascertaining theexact latitude and longitude of the spot where the frigate had gonedown, and he now communicated the result of his calculations to thecaptain, who thereupon gave orders for the boats to steer southwest on aspeed trial for the day, the leading boat to heave-to at sunset and waitfor the rest to close. I had not the remotest notion as to the meaningof 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 sufficedto demonstrate that we were the fastest boat of the whole squadron. Norwas this at all surprising, for the gig was not an ordinary serviceboat; she was the captain's own private property, having been built toorder from his own design, with a special view to the development ofexceptional 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 mostbeautiful model of the whale-boat type, double-ended, with quite anunusual amount of sheer fore and aft, which gave her a fine, bold,buoyant bow and stern; moreover, these were covered in with lightturtle-back decks, that forward measuring six feet in length, while theafter turtle-back measured five feet from the stern-post. She wasfitted with a keel nine inches deep amidships, tapering off to fourinches deep at each end; was rigged as a schooner, with standing foreand main lug and a small jib, and, with her ordinary crew on board andsitting to windward, required no ballast even in a fresh breeze. Smallwonder, therefore, was it that, having such a boat under us, we had runthe rest of the fleet out of sight by midday, the wind still blowingstrong, although it was moderating rapidly.

  The first lieutenant was, like the captain, fond of inventing anddesigning things, but his speciality took the form of logs fordetermining the speed of craft through the water; and in the course ofhis experiments he had provided each of the frigate's boats with aningenious spring arrangement which, attached to an ordinary fishing-linewith a lead weight secured to its outer end, which was continuouslytowed astern, registered the speed of the boat with a very near approachto perfect accuracy.

  The day passed uneventfully away, the wind moderating steadily all thetime, and the sun breaking through considerably before noon, enabling meto secure a meridian altitude wherefrom to compute my latitude. Thesea, too, was going down, and when the sun set that night the sky wore avery promising fine-weather aspect. As the great golden orb vanishedbelow the horizon we rounded the boat to, lowered our sails, and mooredher to a sea anchor made of the oars lashed together in a bundle withthe painter bent on to them. And later on, when it fell dark, welighted a lantern and hoisted it to our fore-masthead, as a beacon forwhich the other boats might steer. The gig had behaved splendidly allthrough the day, never shipping so much as a single drop of water, andnow that she was riding to her oars she took the sea so easily andbuoyantly that I felt as safe as I had ever done aboard the poor old_Althea_ herself, and unhesitatingly allowed all hands to turn in asbest they could in the bottom of the boat, undertaking to keep a lookoutmyself until the other boats had joined company.

  The first boat to make her appearance was the service gig in charge ofMr Flowers, the third lieutenant; she ranged up alongside and hove-toabout two hours after sunset, soon afterwards following our example bythrowing out a sea anchor. Then came the first and second cutters, incommand of the first and second lieutenants; the first cutter arrivingabout an hour after Mr Flowers, while the second cutter appeared abouta quarter of an hour later. The launch followed about half an hourastern of the second cutter; but this was not to be wondered at, theformer being rather deep, owing to the very generous supply of waterthat the doctor had insisted on carrying for the comfort of the wounded.Then, some three-quarters of an hour later, came the jolly-boat incharge of the boatswain; and finally the dinghy, carrying four hands andin charge of my friend and fellow-mid, Jack Keene, turned up close uponmidnight.

  Long ere this, however, we had each in succession spoken the launch,reporting the distance that we had traversed up to sunset. And, withthe data thus supplied, the master had gone to work upon a calculationwhich formed the basis of a sort of table showing the ratio of thespeeds of the several boats, with the aid of which the officer in chargeof each boat could estimate with a moderate degree of accuracy theposition of each of the other boats at any given moment--so long, thatis to say, as the wind held fair enough to allow the boats to steer agiven course. A copy of this table was then furnished to the officer incommand of each boat, after which the captain ordered Mr Flowers tomake the best of his way to Barbadoes, with instructions to report theloss of the frigate immediately upon his arrival, with a request to thesenior naval officer that a craft of some sort might be forthwithdespatched in search of the other boats. Similar instructions were nextgiven to me, except that my port of destination was Bermuda. Of coursewe each carried a written as well as a verbal message to the seniornaval officer of the port to which we were bound; and equally, ofcourse, it was impressed upon us both that if we happened to encounter afriendly craft _en route_, and could induce her to undertake the search,it would be so much the better. Having received these instructions, andtaken 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 boatsgiving us the encouragement of a farewell cheer as we did so; they alsomaking sail at the same time on a west-south-westerly course, whichwould afford them about an even chance of being picked up by a crafteither from Bermuda or Barbadoes; while, in the event of their beingfound by neither, they stood a very good chance of hitting off one oranother of the Leeward Islands.

  For the remainder of that night we sped gaily onward, with the windabout two points free, making splendid progress; although I am bound toadmit that, with the height of sea and the strength of wind that stillprevailed, there were moments when the task of sailing the boat becameexciting enough to satisfy the cravings of even the most exactingindividual. Lindsay and I relieved each other at the tiller, watch andwatch, with one hand forward to keep a lookout ahead and to leeward, therest of the poor fellows being so thoroughly worn out by their longspell at the pumps that rest and sleep was an even more imperativenecessity for them than it was for us.

  By the time of sunrise the wind had dwindled away to a topgallantbreeze, with a corresponding reduction in the amount of sea; we weretherefore enabled to shake out the double reef that we had thus far beencompelled to carry in our canvas, while the aspect of the sky was morepromising than it had been for several days past. The weather was nowas favourable as we could possibly wish, the wind being just freshenough 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, theimprovement in the weather progressed just a little too far; it becameeven finer than we wished it, the wind continuing to drop steadily,until by noon we were sliding over the long, mountainous swell at aspeed of barely four knots, with the hot sun beating down upon us fartoo ardently to be pleasant. Needless to say, we kept a sharp lookoutfor a sail all through the day, but saw nothing; the flying-fish thatsparkled out from the ridges of the swell and went skimming away to portand starboard, gleaming as brilliantly in the strong sunlight as ahandful of new silver dollars, being the only objects to break thesolitude that environed us. By sunset that day the wind had diedcompletely out, leaving the ocean a vast surface of slow-moving, glassyundulations, and I was reluctantly compelled to order the canvas to betaken 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, oneby one, out of the immeasurable expanse of darkening blue above us, thesilence of the vast ocean
solitude that hemmed us in became a thing thatmight be felt. So oppressive was it that, as by instinct, ourconversation gradually dwindled to the desultory exchange of a fewwhispered remarks, uttered at lengthening intervals, until it died outaltogether; while the profound stillness of air and ocean seemed tobecome accentuated rather than broken by the measured roll of the oarsin the rowlocks, and the tinkling lap of the water under the bows andalong 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 eachother every four hours. The men pulled a long, steady, easy stroke, ofa sort that enabled them to keep on throughout the watch without unduefatigue, by taking a five minutes' spell of rest about once an hour; butit was weary work for the poor fellows, after all, and our progress soonbecame provokingly slow.

  About three bells in the middle watch that night, as I half sat, halfreclined in the stern-sheets, drowsily steering by a star, andoccasionally glancing over my shoulder at the ruddy, glowing sickle ofthe rising moon, then in her last quarter, we were all suddenly startledby the sound of a loud, deep-drawn sigh that came to us from somewhereoff the larboard bow, apparently at no great distance from the boat; andwhile we sat wondering and listening, with poised oars, the sound wasrepeated 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 blackwater and slowly glide up abreast of us until it was alongside and allbut within reach of our oars.

  "A whale!" whispered one of the men, in tones that were a trifleunsteady from the startling surprise of the creature's suddenappearance.

  "Ay," replied the man next him, "and that was another that we heard justnow; bull and cow, most likely. I only hopes they haven't got a calfwith 'em, because if they have, the bull may take it into his head toattack us; they're mighty short-tempered sometimes when they have younguns 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, andclose under our bows there rose another leviathan, so closely indeedthat, unless it was a trick of the imagination, I felt a slight tremorthrill through the boat, as though he had touched us! Involuntarily Iglanced 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 asmall, faint, glimmering patch of phosphorescence, that, as I looked,grew larger and more distinct, until, in the course of a very fewseconds, it assumed the shape of another monster rising plumb underneathus.

  "Back water, men! back water, for your lives! There is one of themcoming up right under our keel!" I cried; and, at the words, the mendashed their oars into the water and we backed out of the way, just intime to avoid being hove out of the water and capsized, this fellowhappening to come up with something very like a rush. Meanwhile, otherswere rising here and there all around us, until we found ourselvessurrounded by a school of between twenty and thirty whales. It was arather alarming situation for us; for although the creatures appearedperfectly quiet and well-disposed, there was no knowing at what momentone of them might gather way and run us down, either intentionally orinadvertently; while there was also the chance that another might risebeneath 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 awayby making a noise of some sort; but the former whaler strongly vetoedthis proposition, asserting--whether rightly or wrongly I know not--thatif we startled them the chances were that those nearest at hand wouldturn upon us and destroy the boat. We therefore deemed it best tomaintain a discreet silence; and in this condition of unpleasantsuspense we remained, floating motionless for a full half-hour, thewhales meanwhile lying as motionless as ourselves, when suddenly a stirseemed to thrill through the whole herd, and all in a moment they gotunder way and went leisurely off in a northerly direction, to our greatrelief. We gave them a full quarter of an hour to get well out of ourway, and then the oars dipped into the water once more, and we resumedour voyage.

  At daybreak the atmosphere was still as stagnant as it had been allthrough the night, the surface of the ocean being unbroken by thefaintest ripple, save where, about a mile away, broad on our starboardbow, the fin of a solitary shark lazily swimming athwart our courseturned up a thin, blue, wedge-shaped ripple as he swam. There was,however, a faint, scarcely perceptible mistiness in the atmosphere thatled me to hope we might get a small breeze from somewhere--I littlecared where--before the day grew many hours older. At nine o'clock Isecured an excellent set of sights for my longitude,--having taken theprecaution to set my watch by the ship's chronometer before partingcompany with the launch,--and it was depressing to find, after I hadworked out my calculations, how little progress we had made during thetwenty-one hours since the previous noon. As the morning wore on themistiness 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, adazzling but rayless globe of palpitating fire. A change of some sortwas brewing, I felt certain, and I was somewhat surprised that, withsuch a sky above us, the atmosphere should remain so absolutelystagnant.

  As the day wore on, the thin, scarcely perceptible veil of vapour thathad dimmed the richness of the sky tints in the early morning graduallythickened and seemed to be assuming somewhat of a distinctness of shape.I just succeeded in securing the meridian altitude of the sun, for thedetermination of our latitude, but that was all. Half an hour afternoon the haze had grown so dense that the great luminary showed throughit merely as a shapeless blur of pale, watery radiance, and withinanother hour he had disappeared altogether from the overcast sky. Stillthe wind failed to come to our help; the atmosphere seemed to be dead,so absolutely motionless was it; and although the sun had vanishedbehind the murky vapours that were stealthily and imperceptibly veilingthe firmament, the heat was so distressing that the perspirationstreamed from every pore, the manipulation of the oars grew more andmore languid, and at length, as though actuated by a common impulse, themen gave in, declaring that they were utterly exhausted and could do nomore. And I could well believe their assertion, for even I, whoseexertions were limited to the steering of the boat, felt that even suchslight labour was almost too arduous to be much longer endured. Theoars were accordingly laid in, we went to dinner, and then the men flungthemselves down in the bottom of the boat, and, with their pipesclenched between their teeth, fell fast asleep, an example which wasquickly followed by Lindsay and myself, despite all our efforts to thecontrary.

  When I awoke it was still breathlessly calm, and I thought for a momentthat night had fallen, so dark was it; but upon consulting my watch Ifound that it still wanted nearly an hour to sunset. But, heavens! whata change had taken place in the aspect of the weather during the fourhours or so that I had lain asleep in the stern-sheets of the boat! Itis quite possible that, had I remained awake, I should scarcely havebeen aware of more than the mere fact that the sky was steadily assumingan increasingly sombre and threatening aspect; but, awaking as I did tothe abrupt perception of the change that had been steadily workingitself out during the previous four hours, it is not putting it toostrongly to say that I was startled. For whereas my last consciousmemory of the weather, before succumbing to the blandishments of thedrowsy god, had been merely that of a lowering, overcast sky, that mightportend anything, but probably meant no more than a sharp thunder-squall, I now awakened to the consciousness that the firmament aboveconsisted 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 acurious frayed appearance, while the clouds themselves glowed here andthere with patches of lurid, fiery red, as though each bore within itsbosom a fiercely burning furnace, the ruddy light of which shone throughin places. I had n
ever before beheld a sky like it, but its aspect wassufficiently alarming to convince the veriest tyro in weather-lore thatsomething quite out of the common was brewing; so I at once awoke theslumbering crew to inquire whether any of them could read the signs andtell 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 ofwonder and alarm at the portentous sky that hung above them.

  "Well, if we was in the Chinese seas, I should say that a typhoon wasgoin' to bust out shortly," observed one of them--a grizzled, mahogany-visaged old salt, who had seen service all over the world. "But," hecontinued, "they don't have typhoons in the Atlantic, not as ever I'veheard say."

  "No, they don't have typhoons here, but they has hurricanes, which Itake to mean pretty much the same thing," remarked another.

  "You are right, Tom," said I, thus put upon the scent, as it were, "aChinese typhoon and a West Indian hurricane are the same thing underdifferent names. A third name for them is `cyclone'; and as thisthreatening 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 outhere 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 uponus,'" remarked Dunn. "Big ships has all their work cut out to weatherone 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 wascaught in one off the Paracels, in the old _Audacious_ frigate,--as finea sea-boat as ever was launched,--and, in less time than it takes totell of it, we was dismasted and hove down on our beam-ends; and it tookus all our time to keep the hooker afloat and get her into Hong-Kongharbour. And the very next year I was catched again--in the BasheeChannel, this time--in the _Lively_ schooner, of six guns. We knowed itwas comin'; it gived us good warnin' and left us plenty of time to getready for it; so Mr Barker--the lieutenant in command--gived orders tosend 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 wecapsized--reg'larly `turned turtle'--when the gale struck us, and onlyfive of us lived to tell the tale. As to this here boat, if a hurricaneanything at all like them Chinee typhoons gets hold of her, why, weshall 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 subsidedinto gloomy silence.

  It was a sufficiently alarming retrospect, in all conscience, to whichwe had just listened, and the prophetic utterance wherewith it had beenwound up, while powerfully suggestive of a highly novel and picturesqueexperience in store for us, was certainly not attractive enough to causeus to look forward to its fulfilment with undisturbed serenity;nevertheless, I did not feel like tamely giving in without making someeffort 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 suchtime as might be allowed us, in making some sort of preparation to meetthe now confidently-expected outburst. I looked over our resources, andfound 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 thatsome thoughtful individual had pitched into the boat when getting herready 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, apainter some ten fathoms long, and the boat's anchor, together with thegratings, stretchers, and other fittings belonging to the boat, and afew oddments that might or might not prove useful.

  Was it possible to do anything with these? After considering the mattercarefully I thought it was. The greatest danger to which we were likelyto be exposed seemed to me to consist in our being swamped by the flyingspindrift and scud-water or by the breaking seas, and if we could by anymeans contrive to keep the water out there was perhaps a bare chancethat we might be able to weather the gale. And, after a little furtherconsideration, I thought that what I desired to do might possibly beaccomplished by means of the boat's sails, which were practically new,and made of very light, but closely woven canvas, that ought to provewater-tight. So, having unfolded my ideas to the men, we all went towork 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 ourability to keep the boat riding bows-on to the sea, and to do this itbecame necessary for us to improvise a sea anchor again. This waseasily done by lashing together six of our eight oars in a bundle, threeof the blades at one end and three at the other, with the boat anchorlashed amidships to sink the oars somewhat in the water and give them agrip of it. A span, made by doubling a suitable length of our two-inchrope, was bent on to the whole affair, and the boat's painter was thenbent on to the span, when the apparatus was launched overboard, and oursea anchor was ready for service.

  Our next task was to cut the two lug-sails adrift from their yards. Themainsail was then doubled in half, and one end spread over the foreturtle-back and drawn taut. Over this, outside the boat and under herkeel, we then passed a length of our two-inch rope, girding the boatwith 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. Butbefore heaving it taut, we passed a second girth-rope round the boatover the after turtle-back, next connecting both girth-ropes together bylengths of rope running fore and aft along the outside of the boatunderneath the edge of the top strake. The doubled mainsail was thenstrained taut across the boat, and its edges tucked underneath the fore-and-aft lines outside the boat; the foresail was treated in the sameway, but with its fore edge overlapped by about a foot of the after edgeof the mainsail. Our girth-ropes were then hove taut, with the finishedresult 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 sailswere next turned up and secured by seizings on either side, and our deckwas complete. But, as it then stood, I was not satisfied with it, forat 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 ofwater might enter--quite enough, indeed, to swamp the boat. And withour canvas deck lying flat, as it then was, there was no doubt that verylarge quantities of water would wash over it, and pour down through theopening, should the sea run heavily. Our deck needed to be slopedupward from the forward to the after end of the boat, so that any waterwhich might break over it would flow off on either side before reachingthe opening to which I have referred. We accordingly laid the boat'smainmast along the thwarts fore and aft, amidships, and lashed the heelfirmly to the middle of the foremost thwart. Then, by lashing our twolongest stretchers together, we made a crutch for the head or after endof the mast to rest in; when, by placing this crutch upright in thestern-sheets against the back-board, we were able to raise the mastunderneath the sails until it not only formed a sort of ridge-pole,converting the sails into a sloping roof, but it also strained thecanvas as tight as a drum-head, rendering it so much the less liable toblow away, while it at the same time afforded a smooth surface for thewater to pour off, and it also possessed the further advantage that itgave us a little more headroom underneath the canvas deck or roof. Thiscompleted our preparations--none too soon, for it was now rapidlygrowing dark, and the light of our lantern was needed while putting thefinishing 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 bec
ameaware of the startling rapidity with which the night seemed to havefallen; for with the extinguishment of the lantern we found ourselvesenwrapped in darkness so thick that it could almost be felt. This,however, proved to be only transitory, for with the lapse of a fewminutes our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and we were then ablenot only to discern the shapes of the vast pile of clouds thatthreateningly overhung us, but also their reflections in the oil-smoothwater, the latter made visible by the dull, ruddy glow emanating fromthe clouds themselves, which was even more noticeable now than it hadbeen before nightfall, and which was so unnatural and appalling a sightthat I believe there was not one of us who was not more or less affectedby it. It was the first time that I had ever beheld such a sight, and Iam not ashamed to confess that the sensation it produced in me was, fora short time, something very nearly akin to terror, so dreadful aportent did it seem to be, and so profoundly impressed was I with ourutter helplessness away out there in mid-ocean, in that small, frailboat, with no friendly shelter at hand, and nothing to protect us fromthe gathering fury of the elements--nothing, that is to say, but thehand of God; and--I say it with shame--I thought far too little of Himin those days.

  Not the least trying part of it all was the painful tension of thenerves produced by the suspense--the enforced _waiting_ for the awfulordeal that lay before us. There was nothing for us to do, nothing todistract our attention from that awful, threatening sky, that looked asthough it might momentarily be expected to burst into a devastatingflame that would destroy the world! Some of the men, indeed, franklyavowed that the sight was too terrible for them, and crept away underthe 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--webecame conscious that the swell, which had almost entirely subsided, wasgathering weight again, coming this time out from the north-west. Atfirst the heave was only barely perceptible, but within half an hour ithad grown into a succession of long, steep undulations, running at rightangles athwart the old swell, causing the boat to heave and sway with asingularly uneasy movement, and frequent vicious, jerky tugs at herpainter. Then we noticed that the clouds--which had hitherto beenmotionless, or so nearly so that their movement was not to be detected--were working with a writhing motion, as though they were chained giantsenduring the agonies of some dreadful torture, while the awful ruddylight which they emitted glowed with a still fiercer and more luridradiance, lighting up the restlessly heaving ocean until it burned likethe flood of Phlegethon. Anon there appeared a few scattered shreds ofsmoky scud speeding swiftly athwart the fiery canopy, and almostimmediately afterwards, with a low, weird, wailing sound, there sweptover us a scurrying blast that came and was gone again in a second. Itcame out from the north-west, and judging that this was probably thedirection from which the gale itself would come, we at once rigged outover the stern one of the two oars remaining in the boat, and swept thebows of the gig round until they pointed due north-west. Scarcely hadwe accomplished this when a second scuffle came whistling down upon usfrom the same direction, and before it had swept out of hearing asternthere arose a low moaning to windward, that increased in strength andvolume with appalling rapidity. The sky suddenly grew black as inkahead, a lengthening line of ghostly white appeared stretching along thehorizon ahead and bearing down upon us with frightful speed; the moangrew into a deep, thunderous, howling roar, and from that to a yellwhich 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 thesame instant; and the next thing I knew was that I was lying flat in thestern-sheets, hatless, and with my face stinging as though it had beencut with a whip; while the boat trembled and quivered from stem to sternwith the scourging of wind and water, and the spray blew in a continuoussheet over the opening above me and into the sea astern, not a dropfalling into the boat. The long-expected hurricane was upon us; and nowall that remained was to see how long our frail craft could withstandthe onslaught of the terrific forces arrayed against her.