hen, starboard watch, up
with your sail and give the larboard watch a dressing down!' _Yo--ho_!
_Yo--hay_! _Yo--ho--oh_! Up she goes! A hiss, a crash, a deafening
thud, and a gigantic wave curls overhead and batters down the toiling
men, who hang on for their lives and struggle for a foothold. 'Up with
you!' yells the mate, directly the tangled coil of yellow-clad humanity
emerges like a half-drowned rat, 'Up with you, boys, and give her
hell!' _Yo--ho_! _To--hay_! _Yo--ho--harrhh_! 'Turn that!' 'All
fast, sir!' 'Aloft and roll her up! Now then, starbowlines, show
{122} your spunk!' Away they go, the mate dashing ahead; while the
furious seas shoot up vindictive tongues at them and nearly wash two
men clean off the rigging on a level with the lower topsails. Out on
the swaying yard, standing on the foot-rope that is strung underneath,
they grasp at the hard, wet, struggling canvas till they can pass the
gaskets round the parts still bellying between the buntlines. 'One
hand for the ship and one for yourself' is the rule aloft. But
exceptions are more plentiful than rules on a day like this. Both
hands must be used, though the sail and foot-ropes rack your body and
try their best to shake you off. If they succeed, a sickening thud on
deck, or a smothered scream and a half-heard _plopp_! overside would be
the end of you.

All hands work like fury, for a full Antarctic hurricane is on them.
This great South Polar storm has swept a thousand leagues, almost
unchecked, before venting its utmost rage against the iron coasts all
round the Horn. The South Shetlands have only served to rouse its
temper. Its seas have grown bigger with every mile from the Pole, and
wilder with every mile towards the Horn. Now they are so enormous that
even the truck of the tall Yankee clipper staggering along to {123}
leeward cannot be seen except when both ships are topping the crest.
Wherever you look there seems to be an endless earthquake of
mountainous waves, with spuming volcanoes of their own, and vast,
abysmal craters yawning from the depths. The _Victoria_ begins to
labour. The wind and water seem to be gaining on her every minute.
She groans in every part of her sorely racked hull; while up aloft the
hurricane roars, rings, and screeches through the rigging.

But suddenly there is a new and far more awful sound, which seems to
still all others, as a stupendous mother wave rears its huge, engulfing
bulk astern. O