iently to permit of our filling away
upon our course. This news was fully confirmed by the general aspect of
affairs when I reached the deck; for the sun was now shining brilliantly
in a cloudless sky, and the air was genially warm; while the wind,
though still blowing heavily enough to justify us in retaining the close
reefs in the topsails, had abated its violence so far that it now blew
steadily, instead of beating upon the ship in gusts of headlong fury.
The sea, moreover, though it still seemed to run as high as ever, was no
longer so steep as it had been; the great mountains of water moving more
slowly, and carrying a good wholesome slope on their lee sides, that
enabled the ship to ride them easily and comfortably without the
provocation of a constantly recurring feeling that each great menacing
wall of water was about to overwhelm her.

We had taken the sun, and made it eight bells, and I was on the point of
leaving the deck again to work out the sights in my own cabin, when,
while exchanging some remarks with Forbes, I thought I caught a
momentary glimpse of _something_--what, I knew not--as the ship hung
poised for an instant upon the crest of an unusually heavy wave. It was
but the barest, most fleeting glimpse; for before I could direct
Forbes's attention to it by so much as a word, we were plunging headlong
down the weather slope of the wave, with our horizon on either hand
bounded by a hissing crest that was rearing itself as high as our
maintop, and the barque taking a weather roll of such portentous extent
that both of us instinctively made a dash for the mizzen shrouds and
clung to them for dear life in anticipation of the coming--and
correspondingly abnormal--lee roll; while the roar of the bow wave and
the wind aloft created such a din that I could not have made myself
heard even had I been foolish enough to have attempted it. But I was
confident that I had seen something; and when the ship reached the
bottom of the abyss, where we on deck were becalmed, and the roar of the
surge under our bows had died away, I mentioned the matter to the mate;
so that when we were swung aloft again both of us were eagerly on the
lookout for the object. As almost invariably happens, however, after
the passage of an usually heavy wave, the two or three that now
succeeded were only of moderate height, and higher crests each time
intervened between us and the spot where the object was last seen; it
was also probable