cold blast struck us; but we suffered no harm, for the bo'sun had gotten
the boat bows-on by this. The wind passed us, and there was an instant of
calm. And now all the air above us was full of a continuous roaring, so
very loud and intense that I was like to be deafened. To windward, I
perceived an enormous wall of spray bearing down upon us, and I heard
again the shrill screaming, pierce through the roaring. Then, the bo'sun
whipped in his oar under the cover, and, reaching forward, drew the
canvas aft, so that it covered the entire boat, and he held it down
against the gunnel upon the starboard side, shouting in my ear to do
likewise upon the larboard. Now had it not been for this forethought on
the part of the bo'sun we had been all dead men; and this may be the
better believed when I explain that we felt the water falling upon the
stout canvas overhead, tons and tons, though so beaten to froth as to
lack solidity to sink or crush us. I have said "felt"; for I would make
it so clear as may be, here once and for all, that so intense was the
roaring and screaming of the elements, there could no sound have
penetrated to us, no! not the pealing of mighty thunders. And so for the
space of maybe a full minute the boat quivered and shook most vilely, so
that she seemed like to have been shaken in pieces, and from a dozen
places between the gunnel and the covering canvas, the water spurted in
upon us. And here one other thing I would make mention of: During that
minute, the boat had ceased to rise and fall upon the great swell, and
whether this was because the sea was flattened by the first rush of the
wind, or that the excess of the storm held her steady, I am unable to
tell; and can put down only that which we felt.

Now, in a little, the first fury of the blast being spent, the boat
began to sway from side to side, as though the wind blew now upon the one
beam, and now upon the other; and several times we were stricken heavily
with the blows of solid water. But presently this ceased, and we returned