ready risen to such a height as
to completely becalm our low canvas every time that the schooner settled
down into the trough. The time was evidently at hand when it would be
necessary for us to heave-to; the schooner was therefore got round upon
the starboard tack, with her head to the southward; and, as the
barometer was still falling, the hands were set to work to send down the
yards and house the topmasts while it was still possible to do so. The
task was a dangerous one; but we had plenty of strength, and, the men
working with a will, it was accomplished within an hour; and the
schooner was then ready, as we hoped, to face the worst that could
happen. By noon it was blowing so furiously, and the sea had increased
to such an extent, that the skipper determined not to risk the vessel
any longer by further attempting to sail her, and she was accordingly
hove-to under a close-reefed foresail, when everybody but the officer in
charge of the deck, and the man at the wheel, went below.

As the day wore on the weather grew worse, and by nightfall it was
blowing a perfect hurricane, the force of the wind being so great that,
even under the small rag of a close-reefed foresail, the schooner was
bowed down to her water-ways, and her lee scuppers were all afloat. Yet
the little craft was making splendid weather of it, riding the
mountainous seas as light and dry as a gull, looking well up into the
wind, and fore-reaching at the rate of fully three knots in the hour.
But it was a dreary and uncomfortable time for us all, the air being so
full of scud-water that it was like being exposed to a continuous
torrent of driving rain; despite our oil-skins and sou'-westers half an
hour on deck was sufficient to secure one a drenching to the skin, while
the spray, driven into one's face by the furious sweep of the hurricane,
cut and stung like the lash of a whip. The schooner, being but a small
craft, too, was extraordinarily lively; leaping and plunging, rolling
and pitching to such an extent and with so quick a motion that it was
quite impossible to keep one's footing without holding on to something;
while to secure a meal demanded a series of feats of dexterity that
would have turned a professional acrobat green with envy. And all this
discomfort was emphasised, as it were, by the yelling and hooting and
shrieking of the wind aloft, the roar of the angry sea, and the heavy,
perpetual swish of spray upon the deck.

It was about