not bear it any more.

I turned to my companion and said: "Let us drive her for the shore and
have done with it; she cannot live in this. We will jump when she
touches." But he, having a chest of oak, and being bound three times
with brass, said: "Drive her through it. _It is not often we have such a
fair-wind_." With these words he went below; I hung on for Orfordness.
The people on the strand at Aldeburgh saw us. An old man desired to put
out in a boat to our aid. He danced with fear. The scene still stands in
their hollow minds.

As Orfordness came near, the seas that had hitherto followed like giants
in battle now took to a mad scrimmage. They leapt pyramidically, they
heaved up horribly under her; she hardly obeyed her helm, and even in
that gale her canvas flapped in the troughs. Then in despair I prayed to
the boat itself (since nothing else could hear me), "Oh, Boat," for so I
was taught the vocative, "bear me safe round this corner, and I will
scatter wine over your decks." She heard me and rounded the point, and
so terrified was I that (believe me if you will) I had not even the soul
to remember how ridiculous and laughable it was that sailors should call
this Cape of Storms "the Onion."

Once round it, for some reason I will not explain, but that I believe
connected with my prayer, the sea grew tolerable. It still came on to
the land (we could sail with the wind starboard), and the wind blew
harder yet; but we ran before it more easily, because the water was less
steep. We were racing down the long drear shingle bank of Oxford, past
what they call "the life-boat house" on the chart (there is no life-boat
there, nor ever was), past the look-out of the coastguard, till we saw
white water breaking on the bar of the Alde.