Читать книгу Edith Percival. A Novel онлайн

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At this moment, the clear, commanding voice of Captain Harden was heard giving orders to his men to reef the sails.

"We'll have a rousing gale to-night," said he, a few moments afterward, "or I'm mistaken. I knew this dead calm didn't come for nothing. Ha! here it is! Down, men, down, and hold fast for your lives! The squall is upon us!"

Even as he spoke, the black pall that hung over the sky seemed visibly lifted up, and a ghastly, whitish light lit up the heaving sea. A vivid flash of lightning blazed in the sky followed by a crash of thunder that seemed to rend the very heavens in twain, accompanied by a flood of rain and a terrific gale of wind—and the hurricane burst upon them with tremendous force. For a moment the good ship tottered and quivered in every timber, as if trembling before the gigantic foe; then plunging suddenly downward like a maddened steed, she flew before the hurricane with the speed of the wind. On, on, on, with the spray dashing over the decks, and drenching to the skin the affrighted crew, she sped like a flash. The lightning blazed as though the whole heavens were one vast sheet of flame; the thunder crashed peal upon peal, as though the earth were rending asunder; the rain fell in vast floods of water; the wind shrieked and howled like a demon with impotent fury, and the bark plunged madly on, quivering, creaking, groaning, and straining in every timber. The huge billows rose black and terrific, yawning as though to engulf them, the white foam gleaming dismal and ghastly in the spectral darkness, now and then shown in their appalling hugeness by the blinding glare of the lightning. The whole scene was inexpressibly grand and terrific—the most cowardly soul lost all sense of fear in the awful sublimity, the unspeakable grandeur of the elemental uproar.