n fast; she bent so much under her sails that at
moments she made a fearful angle with the sea of fifteen degrees; but
her good bellied keel adhered to the water as if glued to it. The keel
resisted the grasp of the hurricane. The lantern at the prow cast its
light ahead.

The cloud, full of winds, dragging its tumour over the deep, cramped and
eat more and more into the sea round the hooker. Not a gull, not a
sea-mew, nothing but snow. The expanse of the field of waves was
becoming contracted and terrible; only three or four gigantic ones were
visible.

Now and then a tremendous flash of lightning of a red copper colour
broke out behind the obscure superposition of the horizon and the
zenith; that sudden release of vermilion flame revealed the horror of
the clouds; that abrupt conflagration of the depths, to which for an
instant the first tiers of clouds and the distant boundaries of the
celestial chaos seemed to adhere, placed the abyss in perspective. On
this ground of fire the snow-flakes showed black--they might have been
compared to dark butterflies flying about in a furnace--then all was
extinguished.

The first explosion over, the squall, still pursuing the hooker, began
to roar in thorough bass. This phase of grumbling is a perilous
diminution of uproar. Nothing is so terrifying as this monologue of the
storm. This gloomy recitative appears to serve as a moment of rest to
the mysterious combating forces, and indicates a species of patrol kept
in the unknown.

The hooker held wildly on her course. Her two mainsails especially were
doing fearful work. The sky and sea were as of ink with jets of foam
running higher than the mast. Every instant masses of water swept the
deck like a deluge, and at each roll of the vessel the hawse-holes, now
to starboard, now to larboard, became as so many open mouths vomiting
back the foam into the sea. The women had taken refuge in the cabin, but
the men remained on deck; the blinding snow eddied round, the spitting
surge mingled with it. All was fury.

At that moment the chief of the band, standing abaft on the stern
frames, holding on with one hand to the shrouds, and with the other
taking off the kerchief he wore round his head and waving it in the
light of the lantern, gay and arrogant, with pride in his face, and his
hair in wild disorder, intoxicated by all the darkness, cried out,--

"We are free!"

"Free, free, free," echoed the fugitives, and the band, seizing ho