round, as if flashed into a cavern--into a black and secret chamber of
the sea, with a floor of foaming crests.

It unveiled for a sinister, fluttering moment a ragged mass of clouds
hanging low, the lurch of the long outlines of the ship, the black
figures of men caught on the bridge, heads forward, as if petrified in
the act of butting. The darkness palpitated down upon all this, and then
the real thing came at last.

It was something formidable and swift, like the sudden smashing of
a vial of wrath. It seemed to explode all round the ship with an
overpowering concussion and a rush of great waters, as if an immense dam
had been blown up to windward. In an instant the men lost touch of each
other. This is the disintegrating power of a great wind: it isolates one
from one's kind. An earthquake, a landslip, an avalanche, overtake a man
incidentally, as it were--without passion. A furious gale attacks him
like a personal enemy, tries to grasp his limbs, fastens upon his mind,
seeks to rout his very spirit out of him.

Jukes was driven away from his commander. He fancied himself whirled a
great distance through the air. Everything disappeared--even, for
a moment, his power of thinking; but his hand had found one of
the rail-stanchions. His distress was by no means alleviated by an
inclination to disbelieve the reality of this experience. Though young,
he had seen some bad weather, and had never doubted his ability to
imagine the worst; but this was so much beyond his powers of fancy that
it appeared incompatible with the existence of any ship whatever. He
would have been incredulous about himself in the same way, perhaps, had
he not been so harassed by the necessity of exerting a wrestling effort
against a force trying to tear him away from his hold. Moreover, the