e wind thus we lay, thus we
drifted, steadily trending with the send of each giant surge further and
deeper into the icy regions of the south-west, helpless, foreboding,
disconsolate.

It was the night of the fourth day of the month. The crew were forward
in the forecastle, and I knew not if any man was on deck saving myself.
In truth, there was no place in which a watch could be kept, if it were
not in the companion hatch. Such was the violence with which the seas
broke over the brig that it was at the risk of his life a man crawled
the distance betwixt the forecastle and the quarter-deck. It had been as
thick as mud all day, and now upon this flying gloom of haze, sleet, and
spray had descended the blackness of the night.

I stood in the companion as in a sentry-box, with my eyes just above the
cover. Nothing was to be seen but sheets of ghostly white water sweeping
up the blackness on the vessel's lee, or breaking and boiling to
windward. It was sheer blind chaos to the sight, and you might have
supposed that the brig was in the midst of some enormous vaporous
turmoil, so illusive and indefinable were the shadows of the
storm-tormented night--one block of blackness melting into another, with
sometimes an extraordinary faintness of light speeding along the dark
sky like to the dim reflection of a lanthorn flinging its radiance from
afar, which no doubt must have been the reflection of some particular
bright and extensive bed of foam upon a sooty belly on high, hanging
lower than the other clouds. I say, you might have thought yourself in
the midst of some hellish conflict of vapour but for the substantial
thunder of the surges upon the vessel and the shriek of the slung masses
of water flying like cannon balls between the masts.

After a long and eager look round into the obscurity, semi-lucent with
froth, I went below for a mouthful of spirits and a bite of supper, the
hour being eight bells in the second dog watch as we say, that is, eight
o'clock in the evening. The captain and carpenter were in the cabin.
Upon the swing-tray over the table were a piece of corned beef, some
biscuit, and a bottle of hollands.

"Nothing to be seen, I suppose, Rodney?" says the captain.

"Nothing," I answered. "She looks well up, and that's all that can be
said."

"I've been hove to under bare poles more than once in my time," said the
carpenter, "but never through so long a stretch. I doubt if you'll find
many vessels to look