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