an hour the Sea Lion
was bending to a little gale, with her canvass reduced to close-reefed
mainsail and foresail, and the bonnet off her jib. The sea was fast
getting up, though it came in long, and mountain-like. Roswell dreaded the
mist. Could he pass through the narrow channels that Stimson had described
to him, with a clear sky, one half of his causes of anxiety would be
removed. But the wind was not a clear one, and he felt that no time was to
be lost.

It required great nerve to approach a coast like that of Cape Horn in
such weather. As the schooner got nearer to the real cape, the sight of
the seas tumbling in and breaking on its ragged rock, and the hollow
roaring sound they made, actually became terrific. To add to the awe
inspired in the breast of even the most callous-minded man on board, came
a doubt whether the schooner could weather a certain point of rock, the
western extremity of the island, after she had got so far into a bight as
to render waring questionable, if not impossible. Every one now looked
grave and anxious. Should the schooner go ashore in such a place, a single
minute would suffice to break her to pieces, and riot a soul could expect
to be saved. Roswell was exceedingly anxious, though he remained cool.

"The tides and eddies about these rocks, and in so high a latitude, sweep
a vessel like chips," he said to his chief mate. "We have been set in here
by an eddy, and a terrible place it is."

"All depends on our gears holding on, sir," was the answer, "with a little
on Providence. Just watch the point ahead, Captain Gar'ner; though we are
not actually to leeward of it, see with what a drift we have drawn upon
it! The manner in which these seas roll in from the sow-west is terrific!
No craft can go to windward against them."

This remark of Hazard's was very just. The seas that came down upon the
cape resembled a rolling prairie in their outline. A single wave would
extend a quarter of a mile from trough to trough, and as it passed beneath
the schooner, lifting her high in the air, it really seemed as if the
glancing water would sweep her away in its force. But human art had found
the means to counteract even this imposing display of the power of nature.
The little schooner rode over the billows like a duck, and when she sank
between two of them, it was merely to rise again on a new summit, and
breast the gale gallantly. It was the current that menaced the greatest
danger; for that, unse