LETTER I.] 



A SOUTH SEA HURRICANE. 



7 



of the fore-guards made the groaning fabric reel and shiver 

 throughout her whole bulk. At that time, by common con- 

 sent, we assembled in the deck-house, which had windows 

 looking in all directions, and sat there for five hours. Very 

 few words were spoken, and very little fear was felt. We 

 understood by intuition that if our crazy engines failed at any 

 moment to keep the ship's head to the sea, her destruction 

 would not occupy half an hour. It was all palpable. There 

 was nothing which the most experienced seaman could explain 

 to the merest novice. We hoped for the best, and there was 

 no use in speaking about the worst. Nor, indeed, was speech 

 possible, unless a human voice could have outshrieked the 

 hurricane. - 



In this deck-house the strainings, sunderings, and groanings 

 were hardly audible, or rather were overpowered by a sound 

 which, in thirteen months' experience of the sea in all weathers, 

 I have never heard, and hope never to hear again, unless in a 

 staunch ship, one loud, awful, undying shriek, mingled with a 

 prolonged, relentless hiss. No gathering strength, no languid 

 fainting into momentary lulls, but one protracted, gigantic 

 scream. And this was not the whistle of wind through 

 cordage, but the actual sound of air travelling with tremendous 

 velocity, carrying with it minute particles of water. Nor was 

 the sea running mountains high, for the hurricane kept it down. 

 Indeed during those fierce hours no sea was visible, for the 

 whole surface was caught up and carried furiously into ths air, 

 like snow-drift on the prairies, sibilant, relentless. There was 

 profound quiet on deck, the little life which existed being con- 

 centrated near the bow, where the captain was either lashed to 

 the foremast, or in shelter in the pilot-house. Never a soul 

 appeared on deck, the force of the hurricane being such that 

 for four hours any man would have been carried off his feet. 

 Through the swift strange evening our hopes rested on the 

 engine, and amidst the uproar and din, and drifting spray, and 

 shocks of pitiless seas, there was a sublime repose in the 

 spectacle of the huge walking beams, alternately rising and 

 falling, slowly, calmly, regularly, as if the Nevada Avere on a 

 holiday trip within the Golden Gate. At eight in the evening 

 we could hear each other speak, and a little later, through the 

 great masses of hissing drift we discerned black water. At 

 nine Captain Blethen appeared, smoking a cigar with non- 

 chalance, and told us that the hurricane had nearly boxed the 

 compass, and had been the most severe he had known for 



