Читать книгу Round the Galley Fire онлайн

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It was in the month of May that the vessel in question was bound to Callao with a cargo of coal, but a strong north-westerly gale had driven her much further to the southward than the captain had any desire to find himself. The gale left them on a Wednesday morning, rolling their yardarms into it on a real Cape Horn swell. What is there to which to liken these prodigious heavings? The actual altitude of those liquid hills may seem small in comparison with the appearance they present when viewed from their hollows; but whatever may be their height, to lie dipping and wallowing among them in a vessel of the tonnage of that brig is to undergo an experience hardly less formidable than what was devised by the Mohocks, when they shut up old women in empty casks, and sent them spinning down Ludgate Hill. What straining and groaning and complaining of the tortured fabric, if it be of timber! Every beam, carling, tree-nail, transom, knee, stanchion, and futtock lifts up its dismal creaking and wailing voice as the bewildered craft, with her topsails rattling in the motionless atmosphere, is swung like a pendulum up the shoulder of the swelling mass of green water, leaning down as she goes until she is fairly on her beam-ends, with pots and pannikins, sea-boots and sea-chests, dishes, books, furniture, and whatever else may be inside of her, fetching away with dreadful noise to leeward, amid a volley of sea-blessings from skipper, cook, and steward, and muffled shouts from the watch below in the forecastle.