It required great nerve to approach a coast like that of Cape Horn in such weather.  As the schooner got nearer to the real cape, the sight of the seas tumbling in and breaking on its ragged rock, and the hollow roaring sound they made, actually became terrific.  To add to the awe inspired in the breast of even the most callous-minded man on board, came a doubt whether the schooner could weather a certain point of rock, the western extremity of the island, after she had got so far into a bight as to render waring questionable, if not impossible.  Every one now looked grave and anxious.  Should the schooner go ashore in such a place, a single minute would suffice to break her to pieces, and riot a soul could expect to be saved.  Roswell was exceedingly anxious, though he remained cool.

“The tides and eddies about these rocks, and in so high a latitude, sweep a vessel like chips,” he said to his chief mate.  “We have been set in here by an eddy, and a terrible place it is.”

“All depends on our gears holding on, sir,” was the answer, “with a little on Providence.  Just watch the point ahead, Captain Gar’ner; though we are not actually to leeward of it, see with what a drift we have drawn upon it!  The manner in which these seas roll in from the sow-west is terrific!  No craft can go to windward against them.”

This remark of Hazard’s was very just.  The seas that came down upon the cape resembled a rolling prairie in their outline.  A single wave would extend a quarter of a mile from trough to trough, and as it passed beneath the schooner, lifting her high in the air, it really seemed as if the glancing water would sweep her away in its force.  But human art had found the means to counteract even this imposing display of the power of nature.  The little schooner rode over the billows like a duck, and when she sank between two of them, it was merely to rise again on a new summit, and breast the gale gallantly.  It was the current that menaced the greatest danger; for that, unseen except in its fruits, was clearly setting the little craft to leeward, and bodily towards the rocks.  By this time our adventurers were so near the land that they almost gave up hope itself.  Cape Hatteras and its much-talked-of dangers, seemed a place of refuge compared to that in which our navigators now found themselves.  Could the deepest bellowings of ten thousand bulls be united in a common roar, the noise would not have equalled that of the hollow sound which issued from a sea as it went into some cavern of the rocks.  Then, the spray filled the air like driving rain, and there were minutes when the cape, though so frightfully near, was hid from view by the vapour.