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intricacy of reefs and shoals during the night, or had we in some marvellous fashion blundered past or through them in the darkness, and were already leaving them behind us? As I stood on the poop, asking myself these questions, and sending my glances into the mist that enshrouded the ocean on all sides of me, I fancied that I again caught the mysterious sound which resembled that of breaking water; but this time it seemed to come from ahead. And looking in that direction, I presently became aware of a line of spectral whiteness, stretching right athwart our hawse, that seemed to come and go even as I watched it. "Stand by to wear ship!" I shouted. As the watch sprang to the braces I signed to the man who was tending the wheel to put it hard up. The ship, with her fore topsail aback, slowly fell off, until she was running dead before the wind; then, just as she was coming to on the other tack, the mist lifted for a moment and I caught a glimpse of a vast expanse of white water foaming and spouting and boiling dead ahead of and, as it seemed to me, close aboard of us! "Lay aft here, some of you, and haul out the spanker!" I shouted. "Flow your fore topmast staysail sheet, to help her to come to, and call all hands to make sail. Round in upon your after lee braces. Board your fore and main tacks, Polson. We are on a lee shore, here, and must claw off, if we can!" The furious battering of the boatswain's handspike upon the fore scuttle brought up the watch below with a rush; and the sight of the white water close to leeward--caught by them the moment that they came on deck--was a hint to them, stronger than any words, of the necessity for haste, causing them to spring about the decks with a display of activity very unusual on the part of the merchant seaman. In a few minutes, the ship having come to on the starboard tack and brought the breakers square off her lee beam, the fore and main tacks were boarded, the sheets hauled aft, and half a dozen of the hands were in the weather rigging on their way aloft to loose the topgallantsails and royals, while two more were laying out upon the jibbooms to loose the jibs. Meanwhile I had sprung into the lee mizen rigging, and from that situation was anxiously scanning the sea ahead and upon the lee bow. To my great relief I presently saw that the ship was looking up high enough to justify the hope that she would claw off from the danger that menaced her to leeward
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