nwatched, I looked forth on
one occasion longer than the others chose to venture, and beheld the
most extravagant scene of raging commotion it could enter the brain of
man to imagine. The night was as black as the bottom of a well; but the
prodigious swelling and flinging of white waters hove a faintness upon
the air that was in its way a dim light, by which it was just possible
to distinguish the reeling masts to the height of the tops, and to
observe the figure of the brig springing black and trembling out of the
head of a surge that had broken over and smothered her as in a cauldron,
and to note the shapes of the nearer liquid acclivities as they bore
down upon our weather bow, catching the brig fair under the bluff, and
so sloping her that she seemed to stand end on, and so heeling her that
the sea would wash to the height of the main hatch. Indeed, had she been
loaded, and therefore deep, she could not have lived an hour in that
hollow and frightful ocean; but having nothing in her but ballast she
was like a bladder, and swung up the surges and blew away to leeward
like an empty cask.

When the dawn broke something of its midnight fury went out of the gale.
The carpenter made shift to sound the well, and to our great
satisfaction found but little water, only as much as we had a right to
suppose she would take in above. But it was impossible to stand at the
pumps, so we returned to the cabin and brewed some cold punch and did
what we could to keep our spirits hearty. By noon the wind had weakened
yet, but the sea still ran very heavily, and the sky was uncommonly
thick with piles of dusky, yellowish, hurrying clouds; and though we
could fairly reckon upon our position, the atmosphere was so nipping it
was difficult to persuade ourselves that Cape Horn was not close aboard.

We could now work the pumps, and a short spell freed the brig. We got up
a new main-topsail and bent it, and, setting the reefed foresail, put
the vessel before the wind, and away she ran, chased by the swollen
seas. Thus we continued till by dead reckoning we calculated that we
were about thirty leagues south of the parallel of the Horn, and in
longitude eighty-seven degrees west. We then boarded our larboard tacks
and brought the brig as close to the wind as it was proper to lay her
for a progress that should not be wholly leeway; but four hours after we
had handled the braces the gale, that had not veered two points since it
first came on to