sailors sprawling in all directions and left in each nook and cranny
little specks of light that glowed and trembled till the next sea washed
them away, depositing new ones in their places. Sometimes several seas
following each other with great rapidity and thundering down on our
decks filled them full to the bulwarks, but soon they were discharged
through the lee scuppers.

To reef the mainsail we were forced to run off before the gale under the
single reefed jib. By the time we had finished the wind had forced up
such a tremendous sea that it was impossible to heave her to. Away we
flew on the wings of the storm through the muck and flying spray. A wind
sheer to starboard, then another to port as the enormous seas struck the
schooner astern and nearly broached her to. As day broke we took in the
jib, leaving not a sail unfurled. Since we had begun scudding she had
ceased to take the seas over her bow, but amidships they broke fast
and furious. It was a dry storm in the matter of rain, but the force
of the wind filled the air with fine spray, which flew as high as the
crosstrees and cut the face like a knife, making it impossible to see
over a hundred yards ahead. The sea was a dark lead color as with long,
slow, majestic roll it was heaped up by the wind into liquid mountains
of foam. The wild antics of the schooner were sickening as she forged
along. She would almost stop, as though climbing a mountain, then
rapidly rolling to right and left as she gained the summit of a huge
sea, she steadied herself and paused for a moment as though affrighted
at the yawning precipice before her. Like an avalanche, she shot forward
and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand
battering rams, burying her bow to the catheads in the milky foam at the
bottom that came on deck in all directions--forward, astern, to right
and left, through the hawse-pipes and over the rail.