its struggle against a great force bearing it up, formless,
ungraspable, chaotic and mysterious, as fate.

It was on a gray afternoon in the lull of a three days' gale that
had left the Southern Ocean tumbling heavily upon our ship, under a
sky hung with rags of clouds that seemed to have been cut and
hacked by the keen edge of a sou'-west gale.

Our craft, a Clyde-built barque of 1,000 tons, rolled so heavily
that something aloft had carried away. No matter what the damage
was, but it was serious enough to induce me to go aloft myself with
a couple of hands and the carpenter to see the temporary repairs
properly done.

Sometimes we had to drop everything and cling with both hands to
the swaying spars, holding our breath in fear of a terribly heavy
roll. And, wallowing as if she meant to turn over with us, the
barque, her decks full of water, her gear flying in bights, ran at
some ten knots an hour. We had been driven far south--much farther
that way than we had meant to go; and suddenly, up there in the
slings of the foreyard, in the midst of our work, I felt my
shoulder gripped with such force in the carpenter's powerful paw
that I positively yelled with unexpected pain. The man's eyes
stared close in my face, and he shouted, "Look, sir! look! What's
this?" pointing ahead with his other hand.

At first I saw nothing. The sea was one empty wilderness of black
and white hills. Suddenly, half-concealed in the tumult of the
foaming rollers I made out awash, something enormous, rising and
falling--something spread out like a burst of foam, but with a more