after turning our backs on the Martin
Vas Rocks, we crossed the meridian of Greenwich in latitude 46 degrees
58 minutes south, steering almost due east so as to weather the Cape of
Good Hope. The westerly wind was dead aft, which made us roll a bit;
but we "carried on," with the ship covered with sail from truck to
kelson and stu'n'sails all the way up both on our weather side and to
leeward, as well as spinnakers and a lot of other things in the sail
line whose names I can't remember.

Proceeding thus gaily along, with our yards squared and every stitch of
canvas drawing fore and aft, in another couple of days or so the Cape
pigeons and shearwaters began to come about the ship, showing that we
were approaching the stormy region Mr Mackay had warned me of; and on
the fourth night the sky ahead of us became overcast, while a lot of
sheet and zig-a-zaggy "chain lightning," as sailors call it, told us to
look out for squalls.

This was a true portent; for the wind freshened during the first watch,
causing us to take in all of our stu'n'sails before midnight. Then
followed the royals and topgallants in quick succession, the main-sail
and inner and outer jibs being next furled and the foresail reefed, the
vessel at "four bells" being only under topsails and fore-topgallant
staysail and reefed foresail.

As I had noticed previously, when crossing the Bay of Biscay, the sea
got up very quickly as the wind increased, only with much more alarming
rapidity now than then; for, while at sunset the ocean was comparatively
smooth, it became covered with big rolling waves by the time that we
began to reduce sail, the billows swelling in size each moment, and
tossing and breaking against each other as the wind shifted round dead
in our teeth to the north-east, the very quarter where we had seen the
lightning.

"We're going to have a dirty night of it, sir," said Mr Mackay to the
captain, who after turning in for a short time when the starboard watch
was relieved had come on deck again, anxious about the ship. "I thought
we'd have a blow soon."

"Humph, Cape weather!" snorted out Captain Gillespie. "We're just in
the proper track of it now, being nearly due south of Table Mountain, as
I make it. I think you'd better get down our lighter spars, Mackay, for
this is only the beginning of it--the glass was sinking just now."

"Aye, aye sir," returned the first mate, who had previously called the
watch aft for this very purpose,