ramming them,
and though now and then one curled on board across her rail it was not
often that there was much heavy water upon her slanted deck.

All round the narrow circle a leaden sky met the sea. To weather the
combers were bitten into it in cleancut serrations, but to leeward the
dim horizon was blurred by flying spray, save when the snow whirled
down in thicker wisps and blotted it out altogether. It was bitterly
cold, and the spray stung the skin like half-spent pellets from a gun.
There was, however, only one man exposed to it in turn, and he had
little to do but brace himself against the savage buffeting of the wind
as he clutched the wheel. The _Selache_, for the most part, steered
herself, lifting buoyantly while the froth came sluicing aft from her
tilted bows, falling off a little with a vicious leeward roll when a
comber bigger than usual smote her to weather, and coming up again
streaming to meet the next. Sometimes she forged ahead in what is
called at sea, by courtesy, a "smooth," and all the time shroud and
stay to weather gave out tumultuous harmonies, and the slack of every
rope to leeward blew out in unyielding curves.

In the meanwhile, three of the white men lay sleeping or smoking in the
little cabin, which was partly raised above and partly sunk beneath the
after-deck. It was a reasonably strong structure, but it worked, and
sweated, as they say at sea, and the heat of the stove had further
opened up the seams of it. Moisture dripped from the beams overhead,
moisture trickled up and down the slanting deck, there were great
globules of it on the bulk-heading, and everything, including the men's
clothes and blankets, was wet. They lay in their bunks from necessity,
because it was a somewhat laborious matter to sit, and said very little
since it was difficult to hear anything amidst the cataclysm of
elemental sound. Indeed, it became at length almost a relief to turn
out into inky darkness or misty daylight dimmed by flying spray to take
a trick at the jarring wheel.

For three days this continued, and then, when the gale broke and a
little pale sunshine streamed down on the tumbling sea, changing the
grey combers to flashing white and green, they gave her a double-reefed
mainsail, part of the boom-foresail, and a jib or two, and thrashed her
slowly back to the northwards on the starboard tack. Still, more than
one of them glanced over the taffrail longingly as she gathered way.
She w