e heavens from side to side. At times
a bow would appear in fragments, showing the keystone of the arch
midway in air, and its two buttresses on the horizon. In all cases
the light of the bow could be quenched by a Nicol's prism, with its
long diagonal tangent to the arc. Sometimes gleaming patches of the
firmament were seen amid the clouds. When viewed in the proper
direction, the gleam could be quenched by a Nicol's prism, a dark
aperture being thus opened into stellar space.

At sunset on Thursday the denser clouds were fiercely fringed, while
through the lighter ones seemed to issue the glow of a conflagration.
On Friday morning we sighted Cape Finisterre--the extreme end of the
arc which sweeps from Ushant round the Bay of Biscay. Calm spaces of
blue, in which floated quietly scraps of cumuli, were behind us, but
in front of us was a horizon of portentous darkness. It continued
thus threatening throughout the day. Towards evening the wind
strengthened to a gale, and at dinner it was difficult to preserve the
plates and dishes from destruction. Our thinned company hinted that
the rolling had other consequences. It was very wild when we went to
bed. I slumbered and slept, but after some time was rendered
anxiously conscious that my body had become a kind of projectile, with
the ship's side for a target. I gripped the edge of my berth to save
myself from being thrown out. Outside, I could hear somebody say that
he had been thrown from his berth, and sent spinning to the other side
of the saloon. The screw laboured violently amid the lurching; it
incessantly quitted the water, and, twirling in the air, rattled
against its bearings, causing the ship to shudder from stem to stern.
At times the waves struck us, not with the soft impact which might be
expected from a liquid, but with the sudden solid shock of
battering-rams. 'No man knows the force of water,' said one of the
officers,' until he has experienced a storm at sea.' These blows
followed each other at quicker intervals, the screw rattling after
each of them, until, finally, the delivery of a heavier stroke than
ordinary seemed to reduce the saloon to chaos. Furniture crashed,
glasses rang, and alarmed enquiries immediately followed. Amid the
noises I heard one note of forced laughter; it sounded very ghastly.
Men tramped through the saloon, and busy voices were heard aft, as if
something there had gone wrong.

I rose, and not without difficulty