Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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When night drew in the sea had fairly risen, and came bellowing along in mountainous masses many miles in length at a speed that bade fair to overtake the fleeing ship. Strange it was to note how, as the waves grew, the ship seemed to dwindle until her huge bulk appeared quite insignificant. And now, at frequent intervals, enormous bodies of broken water hurled themselves on board, often filling the spacious decks flush fore and aft with a seething flood. And still the “old man,” hung on, his courage and faith in the powers of his ship being justly rewarded by a week’s run of over two thousand miles without the loss of a rope-yarn. Then the breeze gradually faltered, swerved from its steadfast direction, and worked round by the south, until at south-east it dropped lifeless for an hour or so. Then out from the north-east it rushed like a raving genie, almost catching the ship aback, and giving the scanty band of toilers a tremendous task to handle the immense squares of canvas that thundered like infuriate monsters against their restraining bonds. But in a short time the gale had veered round into the westward again, and the Coryphæna resumed her headlong race to the east. Running upon the arc of a great circle, she gradually worsened the weather as she reached higher latitudes. Stinging snow squalls came yelling after her, hiding everything behind a bitter veil. Past gigantic table-topped icebergs, floating mountains against whose gaunt sides the awful billows broke with deafening clangour, flinging their hissing fragments hundreds of feet into the gloomy sky. At last so fierce grew the following storm that the task of reducing sail became absolutely necessary. All hands were called and sped aloft to the unequal conflict. Scourged by the merciless blast, battered by the threshing sails, they strove for dear life through two terrible hours of that stern night. A feeble cry was heard,—a faint splash. Only a man dropped from the main top-gallant yard,—through one hundred and twenty feet of darkness into the yeasty smother beneath, and ere the news reached the deck, calm and peaceful below the tumult, more than a mile astern, swallowed by the ever-unsatisfied maw of the ravening sea. And onward like a meteor sped the flying ship, “running her Easting down.”