Hours later the jerking and pitching became so furious that it awakened him, and when he rose on his elbow he was thrown out of his berth by a tremendous lurch.  Sitting up with his feet braced, he listened for a little to the roar of the tempest, the trampling feet on deck, and the screaming orders.  Evidently things were going hardly above; the storm was little less than a tornado.  Seriously anxious at last for Clara—­or, as he tried to call her to himself, Miss Van Diemen—­he stole out of his room, clambered or fell up the companionway, opened the door after a struggle with a sea which had just come inboard, got on to the quarter-deck, and, holding by the shrouds, quailed before a spectacle as sublime and more terrible than the Great Canon of the Colorado.

It was daylight.  The sun was just rising from behind a waste of waters; it revealed nothing but a waste of waters.  All around the brig, as far as the eye could reach, the Pacific was one vast tumble of huge blue-gray, mottled masses, breaking incessantly in long, curling ridges, or lofty, tossing steeps of foam.  Each wave was composed of scores of ordinary waves, just as the greater mountains are composed of ranges and peaks.  They seemed moving volcanoes, changing form with every minute of their agony, and spouting lavas of froth.  All over this immense riot of tormented deeps rolled beaten and terrified armies of clouds.  The wind reigned supreme, driving with a relentless spite, a steady and obdurate pressure, as if it were a current of water.  It pinned the sailors to the yards, and nearly blew Thurstane from the deck.

The Lolotte was down to close-reefed topsails, close-reefed spencer and spanker, and storm-jib.  Even upon this small and stout spread of canvas the wind was working destruction, for just as Thurstane reached the deck the jib parted and went to leeward in ribbons.  Sailors were seen now on the bowsprit fighting at once with sea and air, now buried in water, and now holding on against the storm, and slowly gathering in the flapping, snapping fragments.  Next a new jib (a third one) was bent on, hoisted half-way, and blown out like a piece of wet paper.  Almost at the same moment the captain saw threatening mouths grimace in the mainsail, and screamed “Never mind there forrard.  Lay up on the maintawps’l yard.  Lay up and furl.”

After half an hour’s fight, the sail bagging and slatting furiously, it was lashed anyway around the yard, and the men crawled slowly down again, jammed and bruised against the shrouds by the wind.  Every jib and forestaysail on board having now been torn out, the brig remained under close-reefed foretopsail, spencer, and spanker, and did little but drift to leeward.  The gale was at its height, blowing as if it were shot out of the mouths of cannon, and chasing the ocean before it in mountains of foam.  One thing after another went; the topgallants shook loose and had to be sent down; the chain bobstays parted