BOUND TEE COOOS AND SEYGEELLE8. 133 



were gone, not even the stumps being visible, and it 

 seemed to our eager eyes as if she was settKng down. 

 It was even so, for as we looked, unmindful of our own 

 danger, she quietly disappeared — swallowed up with her 

 human freight in a moment, like a pebble dropped into 

 a pond. 



While we looked with hardly beating hearts at the 

 place where she had sunk, all was blotted out in thick 

 darkness again. With a roar, as of a thousand thunders, 

 the tempest came once more, but from the opposite direc- 

 tion now. As we were under no sail, we ran little risk 

 of being caught aback ; but, even had we, nothing could 

 have been done, the vessel being utterly out of control, 

 besides the impossibility of getting about. It so happened, 

 however, that when the storm burst upon us again, we 

 were stern on to it, and we drove steadily for a few 

 moments until we had time to haul to the wind again. 

 Great heavens ! how it blew ! Surely, I thought, this 

 cannot last long — just as we sometimes say of the rain 

 when it is extra heavy. It did last, however, for what 

 seemed an interminable time, although any one could 

 see that the sky was getting kindlier. Gradually, im- 

 perceptibly, it took off, the sky cleared, and the tumult 

 ceased, until a new day broke in untellable beauty over 

 a revivified world. 



Years afterwards I read, in one of the hand-books 

 treating of hurricanes and cyclones, that " in the centre 

 of these revolving storms the sea is so violent that few 

 ships can pass through it and live." That is true talk. 

 I have been there, and bear witness that but for the 

 build and sea-kindliness of the Cachalot, she could not 

 have come out of that horrible cauldron again, but would 

 have joined that nameless unfortunate whom we saw 



