446 FLYING BEFORE THE GALE. 



schooner staggered through it was little short of a 

 miracle. Ulysses could hardly have had a worse 

 dusting, when his stupid crew let loose all the winds 

 which ^olus had so kindly bagged up for him. 

 Every stitch of canvas was ripped up but the little 

 rag of a top-sail, under which we scudded before the 

 gale through four days, running down in one four-and- 

 twenty hours two hundred and twenty miles of lati- 

 tude. The seas which came tumbling after us, each 

 one seemingly determined to roll over the poop, were 

 perfectly frightful ; especially when one looked aloft 

 and saw the little patch of canvas threatening every 

 moment to give w^ay, and heard the waters gurgling 

 under the counter as the stern went down and the 

 bows went up, while a very Niagara was roaring and 

 curveting after us, as if maddened with defeat, and 

 with each new effort the more determined to catch 

 the craft before she should mount the crest ahead. 

 But she slipped from under every threatening danger 

 as gracefully, if not as 



" Swift, as an eagle cleaving the liquid air," 



and, leaving the parted billows foaming and roaring 

 behind her, passed on triumphant and unharmed. 



When off Labrador, the wind hauled suddenly to 

 the westward, and we had to give up the chase, and 

 get the schooner's head to it. McCormick had man- 

 aged to patch up the foresail, and, getting a triangu- 

 lar piece of it rigged for a storm-sail, we proposed 

 to heave her to. There did not appear to be much 

 chance of a successful termination to this new ven- 

 ture, but it was clearly this or nothing. The sail was 

 set and the determination come to just in time, for we 

 shipped a terrible sea over the quarter, the schooner 



