of a mountainous sea, amidst a hissing snowstorm of spray, with her
bright copper glancing from stem to stern, and her scanty white canvas
swelling aloft, and twenty feet of her keel forward occasionally hove
into the air and clean out of the water, as if she had been a sea-bird
rushing to take wing--and the next, sinking entirely out of
sight--hull, masts, and rigging--behind an intervening sea, that rose
in hoarse thunder between us, threatening to overwhelm both us and her.
As for the transports, the largest of the three had lost her
foretopmast, and had bore up under her foresail; another was also
scudding under a close-reefed fore-topsail; but the third or
head-quarter ship was still lying to windward, under her storm
staysails. None of the merchant vessels were to be seen, having been
compelled to bear up in the night, and to run before it under bare
poles.

At length, as the sun rose, we got before the wind, and it soon
moderated so far that we could carry reefed topsails and foresail; and
away we all bowled, with a clear, deep, cold, blue sky, and a bright
sun overhead, and a stormy leaden-coloured ocean with whitish
green-crested billows, below. The sea continued to go down, and the
wind to slacken, until the afternoon, when the commodore made the
signal for the _Torch_ to send a boat's crew, the instant it could be
done with safety, on board the dismasted ship to assist in repairing
damages and in getting up a jury-foretopmast.

The damaged ship was at this time on our weather-quarter; we
accordingly handed the fore-topsail, and presently she was alongside.
We hailed her, that we intended to send a boat on board, and desired
her to heave-to, as we did, and presently she rounded to under our lee.
One of the quarter-boats was manned, with three of the carpenter's