ell enough--I knew what he wished
to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on we were bound
for the whirl of the Strom, and nothing could save us!

"You perceive that in crossing the Strom _channel_, we always went a
long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had
to wait and watch carefully for the slack--but now we were driving right
upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! 'To be sure,' I
thought, 'we shall get there just about the slack--there is some little
hope in that'--but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great
a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed
had we been ten times a ninety-gun ship.

"By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps
we did not feel it so much as we scudded before it, but at all events
the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind and lay flat and
frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too,
had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as
black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a
circular rift of clear sky--as clear as I ever saw, and of a deep bright
blue--and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a luster that
I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything about us with the
greatest distinctness--but, O God, what a scene it was to light up!

"I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother--but, in some
manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I
could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of
my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as
death, and held up one of his fingers as if to say '_listen_!'

"At first I could not make out what he meant--but soon a hideous thought
flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I
glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I
flung it far away into the ocean. _It had run down at seven o'clock! We
were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Strom was in
full fury!_

"When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the
waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip
from beneath her--which appears very strange to a landsman--and this is
what is called _riding_, in sea-phrase. Well, so far we had ridden the
swells very cleverly, but presently a gigantic sea