Hour by hour
through the short and gloomy day, sail after sail has gone fluttering
in; till now, at night-fall, she reels and rolls before the storm under
a single close reefed maintopsail.
There is a humming, and a roaring, and a rushing of great waters, so
that they who are clinging to the bulwarks, and watching awe-struck
this great work of the Lord's, cannot hear one another though they
shout. Now there is a grey mountain which chases the ship, overtakes
her, pours cataracts of water over her rounded stern, and goes hissing
and booming past her. And now a roll more frantic than usual, nigh dips
her mainyard, and sends the water spouting wildly over her bulwarks.
("Oh, you very miserable ass," said Captain Brentwood; "to sit down and
try to describe the indescribable. Do you think that because you can
see all the scene before you now, because your flesh creeps, and your
blood moves as you call it to mind, do you think, I say, that you can
describe it? Do you think that you can give a man, in black and white,
with ink, and on paper, any real notion of that most tremendous
spectacle, a sharp bowed ship running before a gale of wind through the
ice in the great South Sea, where every wave rolls round the world? Go
to--read Tom Cringle, who has given up his whole soul to descriptions,
and see how many pictures dwell in your mind's eye, after reading his
books.
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