CHAPTER VII.

SUPERHUMAN HORRORS.


On their part it was with wild jubilee and delight that those on board
the hooker saw the hostile land recede and lessen behind them. By
degrees the dark ring of ocean rose higher, dwarfing in twilight
Portland, Purbeck, Tineham, Kimmeridge, the Matravers, the long streaks
of dim cliffs, and the coast dotted with lighthouses.

England disappeared. The fugitives had now nothing round them but the
sea.

All at once night grew awful.

There was no longer extent nor space; the sky became blackness, and
closed in round the vessel. The snow began to fall slowly; a few flakes
appeared. They might have been ghosts. Nothing else was visible in the
course of the wind. They felt as if yielded up. A snare lurked in every
possibility.

It is in this cavernous darkness that in our climate the Polar
waterspout makes its appearance.

A great muddy cloud, like to the belly of a hydra, hung over ocean, and
in places its lividity adhered to the waves. Some of these adherences
resembled pouches with holes, pumping the sea, disgorging vapour, and