Читать книгу Into the Frozen South онлайн

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I dare say that from the deck of a forty-thousand-ton Atlantic liner this gale might have seemed a trifle, nothing more than a capful of wind and a very slightly disturbed sea; but seen from the Quest it was an eye-opener. Big seas came cascading over the bows in an unceasing procession, and at every roll the ship seemed eager to bale half the Atlantic aboard over her rails. I found this everlasting erratic movement very tiring; the wind sort of confused one, and the annoyance at the unending slashing of the sprays was great. To steady her we tried to set the mizen; but almost as it was sheeted home there came a ripsnorting squall that split it badly, so all our work went for nothing. The sail was taken in, and the steadiness that might have resulted from the weight of wind it could have carried was denied us.

Officially, this breeze was termed a moderate S.W. gale; at the time I wondered what a real storm was going to be like. To me the waves seemed to pile up like mountains, towering high and very high above us, swinging down towards the shivering hull as if determined to overwhelm it, only to swing us up and up to a watery, noisy crest, on which we perched like the Ark on Mount Ararat, to stare down into vast caverns, veined with milky white and noisy to a degree, until down we swooped, with a curious, unsettling corkscrew motion that made one’s middle-part seem like water, to wallow and riot in a very pit of anger.