ng of the
wind, and the angry hiss of maddened waters suddenly scourged into
white, luminous foam, with the spindrift flying over her in blinding,
drenching showers, the ship gathered way and fled southward like a
frightened thing.

The hurricane--for such it was--blew with appalling violence for exactly
twelve hours, during which the _Nonsuch_ scudded dead before it under
close-reefed topsails, with the canvas straining and tugging until
opinion became divided as to whether the cloth would part company with
the bolt-ropes, or whether, being new and strong, it would uproot the
masts and drag them bodily out of the ship, especially when the crest of
a sea swept roaring and foaming away ahead of her, and her way was
checked as she settled back into the trough. Luckily, neither of these
things happened, for if the canvas was new, so too was the good stout
hemp rigging, which had, moreover, been set up afresh fore and aft,
aloft and alow, after the careening of the ship in that snug little
Trinidad creek; consequently, although the masts bent like fishing-rods
and groaned ominously from time to time in their partners, everything
held, and the ship emerged from the unequal struggle not a penny the
worse, although it must be admitted that her rigging had been stretched
to such an extent that when at length it was relieved of the strain by
the cessation of the gale, it hung loosely in bights that caused the
worthy boatswain to shake his head and mutter to himself.

When at length the gale broke and the wind, veering as it fell,
gradually worked round until it once more became the trade-wind, blowing
out from about due east, the ship had accomplished the record run of her
existence up to that date, Dyer's reckoning showing that the craft had
averaged twelve knots throughout that mad, desperate race, and that it
had swept them to within three hundred and twenty-five miles of their
destination.

Late in the afternoon of the second day after the cessation of the gale,
land was sighted ahead, and Dyer, having hurried aloft and carefully
studied the features of the coast stretching athwart the ship's bows, at
length announced with great satisfaction that Nombre de Dios lay
straight ahead. Then George and he retired to the main cabin, where, in
conjunction with the other responsible officers of the ship, they held a
council, at which it was ultimately determined to take the ship into a
small creek, some twenty miles to the eastw