of the foreyard, which had been carelessly left
out, had been broken off short in the earing, from the pressure of the
wind on the bare spar. The roaring of the wind through the rigging was
such as only one who has heard it can conceive.

I gripped close the quarter-deck railing, and drew myself aft to the
shelter of the wheelhouse, where, securing myself from being blown
away like a piece of paper, I watched the sea. It rose behind us in
huge mountains, the summits of which were always combing over and
sliding down the weltering flanks of the wave,--not like the surf on a
shore, but pushed over like snow; and as a wave overtook us lying in
the bottom of the valley, it so overhung that it seemed impossible
that when it broke it should not bury us; but the stern was always
caught by the forefoot of it, and the old ship began to rise, and went
up, up, up, until I was dizzy. Then we hovered on the summit a moment,
looking out on such an expanse of gigantic waves as I had never
pictured to myself, the distance lost in the driving spray; and, while
I looked, the wave passed from under us, and we went down and down
with a rapidity of descent which was almost like falling from a
balloon. Then, after another moment's rest in the valley, came the
shuddering half apprehension of the next wave as it rose above us,
threatening again, and then, after again soaring aloft, down again
into the driving of the spray; the old ship rolling, plunging, and now
and then quivering, as some side wave struck her, with a complication
of motions, sidelong and headlong, the huge waves flying before us and
yet carrying us on,--wild motions, rolling, pitching, sinking down the
long green slope into the valley, to be flung up into the tumult of
wind and wave again. In all this complexity of forces we were as
helpless as feathers in the wind, cut off from mother earth as much
as if we were carried away on the clouds; the feeling of absolute
insignificance growing on one as the ship drove on, the creaking of
the ship and the hissing rush of the waters hardly audible for the
shrieking of the gale through the rigging. In all my life I have never
so understood the utter impotence and triviality of humanity as I felt
it then.

The ship, though not in measure with the colossi of later times, was
yet a huge mass as measured by the man, and she was no more than
a cork on the tide. Up and down she went, like a child's
swing,--wallowing and rolling, with the