"Stop her!" bellowed Mr. Rout.

Nobody--not even Captain MacWhirr, who alone on deck had caught sight of
a white line of foam coming on at such a height that he couldn't believe
his eyes--nobody was to know the steepness of that sea and the awful
depth of the hollow the hurricane had scooped out behind the running
wall of water.

It raced to meet the ship, and, with a pause, as of girding the loins,
the Nan-Shan lifted her bows and leaped. The flames in all the lamps
sank, darkening the engine-room. One went out. With a tearing crash and
a swirling, raving tumult, tons of water fell upon the deck, as though
the ship had darted under the foot of a cataract.

Down there they looked at each other, stunned.

"Swept from end to end, by God!" bawled Jukes.

She dipped into the hollow straight down, as if going over the edge of
the world. The engine-room toppled forward menacingly, like the inside
of a tower nodding in an earthquake. An awful racket, of iron things
falling, came from the stokehold. She hung on this appalling slant long
enough for Beale to drop on his hands and knees and begin to crawl as if
he meant to fly on all fours out of the engine-room, and for Mr. Rout
to turn his head slowly, rigid, cavernous, with the lower jaw dropping.
Jukes had shut his eyes, and his face in a moment became hopelessly
blank and gentle, like the face of a blind man.

At last she rose slowly, staggering, as if she had to lift a mountain