CHAPTER XII.

ON THE HORIZON.


At that date the tempest took its most terrible form, that of the
hurricane. The wind had set in from the southwest. The air moved with a
velocity of ninety miles an hour. It was indeed a hurricane, in fact,
one of those terrible windstorms which wrecks all the ships of a
roadstead, and which, even on land, the most solid structures cannot
resist. Such was the one which, on the 25th of July, 1825, devastated
Guadaloupe. When heavy cannons, carrying balls of twenty-four pounds,
are raised from their carriages, one may imagine what would become of a
ship which has no other point of support than an unsteady sea? And
meanwhile, it is to its mobility alone that she may owe her salvation.
She yields to the wind, and, provided she is strongly built, she is in
a condition to brave the most violent surges. That was the case with
the "Pilgrim."

A few minutes after the top-sail had been torn in pieces, the
foretop-mast stay-sail was in its turn torn off. Dick Sand must then
give up the idea of setting even a storm-jib--a small sail of strong
linen, which would make the ship easier to govern.

The "Pilgrim" then ran without canvas, but the wind took effect on her
hull, her masts, her rigging, and nothing more was needed to impart to
her an excessive velocity. Sometimes even she seemed to emerge from the