Let us remark here, by the way, that this ringing buoy, a kind of bell
tower on the deep, was removed in 1802. There are yet alive very old
mariners who remember hearing it. It forewarned, but rather too late.

The orders of the skipper were obeyed. The Languedocian made a third
sailor. All bore a hand. Not satisfied with brailing up, they furled the
sails, lashed the earrings, secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, and
leech-lines, and clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, which
thus might serve as back-stays. They fished the mast. They battened down
the ports and bulls'-eyes, which is a method of walling up a ship. These
evolutions, though executed in a lubberly fashion, were, nevertheless,
thoroughly effective. The hooker was stripped to bare poles. But in
proportion as the vessel, stowing every stitch of canvas, became more
helpless, the havoc of both winds and waves increased. The seas ran
mountains high. The hurricane, like an executioner hastening to his
victim, began to dismember the craft. There came, in the twinkling of an
eye, a dreadful crash: the top-sails were blown from the bolt-ropes, the
chess-trees were hewn asunder, the deck was swept clear, the shrouds
were carried away, the mast went by the board, all the lumber of the
wreck was flying in shivers. The main shrouds gave out although they
were turned in, and stoppered to four fathoms.

The magnetic currents common to snowstorms hastened the destruction of
the rigging. It broke as much from the effect of effluvium as the
violence of the wind. Most of the chain gear, fouled in the blocks,
ceased to work. Forward the bows, aft the quarters, quivered under the
terrific shocks. One wave washed overboard the compass and its binnacle.
A second carried away the boat, which, like a box slung under a
carriage, had been, in accordance with the quaint Asturian custom,
lashed to the bowsprit. A third breaker wrenched off the spritsail yard.