ship still
staunch underneath us, and Hope's lamp burning brightly. The moon
had been momentarily obscured, but now shone out again, lighting up
brilliantly our bravely-battling ship. But, alas for others!--men,
like ourselves, whose hopes were gone. Quite near us was the battered
remainder of what had been a splendid ship. Her masts were gone, not
even the stumps being visible, and it seemed to our eager eyes as if she
was settling down. It was even so, for as we looked, unmindful of our
own danger, she quietly disappeared--swallowed up with her human freight
in a moment, like a pebble dropped into a pond.

While we looked with hardly beating hearts at the place where she had
sunk, all was blotted out in thick darkness again. With a roar, as of
a thousand thunders, the tempest came once more, but from the opposite
direction now. As we were under no sail, we ran little risk of being
caught aback; but, even had we, nothing could have been done, the vessel
being utterly out of control, besides the impossibility of getting
about. It so happened, however, that when the storm burst upon us again,
we were stern on to it, and we drove steadily for a few moments until we
had time to haul to the wind again. Great heavens! how it blew! Surely,
I thought, this cannot last long--just as we sometimes say of the
rain when it is extra heavy. It did last, however, for what seemed an
interminable time, although any one could see that the sky was getting
kindlier. Gradually, imperceptibly, it took off, the sky cleared, and
the tumult ceased, until a new day broke in untellable beauty over a
revivified world.

Years afterwards I read, in one of the hand-books treating of hurricanes
and cyclones, that "in the centre of these revolving storms the sea is
so violent that few ships can pass through it and live." That is true
talk. I have been there, and bear witness that but for the build and
sea-kindliness of the CACHALOT, she could not have come out of that
horrible cauldron again, but would have joined that nameless unfortunate
whom we saw succumb, "never again heard of." As it was, we found two
of the boats stove in, whether by breaking sea or crushing wind nobody
knows. Most of the planking of the bulwarks was also gone, burst outward
by the weight of the water on deck. Only the normal quantity of water
was found in the well on sounding, and not even a rope-yarn was gone
from aloft. Altogether, we came out of the ordeal triumphantly, wh