FADDY' S LATEST EXPLOIT. 355 



very door of adamant closed against all hope. Nearer 

 and nearer they drew, until the roar of the baffled 

 Pacific was deafening, maddening, in its overwhelming 

 volume of chaotic sound. All hands stood motionless, 

 with eyes fixed in horrible fascination upon the indescrib- 

 able vortex to which they were being irresistibly driven. 



At last, just as the fringes of the back-beaten billows 

 hissed up to greet them, they felt her motion ease. 

 Instinctively looking aft, they saw the skipper coolly wave 

 his hand, signing to them to trim the yards. As they 

 hauled on the weather braces, she plunged through the 

 maelstrom of breakers, and before they had got the yards 

 right round they were on the other side of that enormous 

 barrier, the anchor was dropped, and all was still. The 

 vessel rested, like a bird on her nest, in a deep, still tarn, 

 shut in, to all appearance, on every side by huge rock 

 barriers. Of the furious storm but a moment before 

 howling and raging all around them, nothing remained 

 but an all-pervading, thunderous hum, causing the deck 

 to vibrate beneath them, and high overhead the jagged, 

 leaden remnants of twisted, tortured cloud whirling past 

 their tiny oblong of sky. Just a minute's suspension of all 

 faculties but wonder, then, in one spontaneous, heartfelt 

 note of genuine admiration, all hands burst into a cheer 

 that even overtopped the mighty rumble of the baffled sea. 



Here they lay, perfectly secure, and cut in their whale 

 as if in dock ; then at the first opportunity they ran out, 

 with fearful difficulty, a kedge with a whale-line attached, 

 by which means they warped the vessel out of her hiding- 

 place — a far more arduous operation than getting in had 

 been. But even this did not exhaust the wonders of that 

 occasion. They had hardly got way upon her, beginning 

 to draw out from the land, when the eagle-eye of one of 

 the Maories detected the carcass of a whale rolling among 



