I was out on the deck, and the wind almost blew me into the scuppers. The
captain was standing right above me on the poop watching the growing
light in the east. The waist was full of foamy water that roared and
surged and washed everything movable about. Above, the masts and spars
looked dark in the dim, gray light of the early morning, the strips of
canvas stretching away from the jackstays and flicking dismally to
leeward. All the yards, however, were trimmed nicely, showing Trunnell's
master hand, and on the mainmast, bellying and straining with the
pressure, was a new storm spencer, set snug and true, holding the
plunging vessel up to the great rolling sea that came like a living hill
from the southwest. Forward, a bit of a staysail was set as taut as a
drumhead, looking no bigger than a good-sized handkerchief. Aft, a
trysail, set on the spanker boom, helped the tarpaulin in the mizzen to
bring her head to the sea.

I climbed up the poop ladder and took a look around.

It was a dismal sight. As far as the eye could reach through the white
haze of the flying drift the ocean presented a dirty steel-gray color,
torn into long, ragged streaks of white where the combers rolled on the
high seas before the gale. Overhead all was a deep blank of gray vapor.
The wind was not blowing nearly as hard as it had during my last watch on
deck, but the sea was rolling heavier. It took the _Pirate_ fair on the
port bow, and every now and again it rose so high above her topgallant
rail that it showed green light through the mass that would crash over to
the deck and go roaring white to leeward, making the main deck
uninhabitable. Sometimes a heavy, quick comber would strike her on the
bluff of the bow, and the shock would almost knock the men off their
feet. Then the burst of water would shoot high in the air, going