water.  Higher and higher it towered, until it was level with our lower yards, then it broke and fell upon us.  All was blank.  Beneath that mass every thought, every feeling, fled but one—­“How long shall I be able to hold my breath?” After what seemed a never-ending time, we emerged from the wave more dead than alive, but with the good ship still staunch underneath us, and Hope’s lamp burning brightly.  The moon had been momentarily obscured, but now shone out again, lighting up brilliantly our bravely-battling ship.  But, alas for others!—­men, like ourselves, whose hopes were gone.  Quite near us was the battered remainder of what had been a splendid ship.  Her masts were gone, not even the stumps being visible, and it seemed to our eager eyes as if she was settling down.  It was even so, for as we looked, unmindful of our own danger, she quietly disappeared—­swallowed up with her human freight in a moment, like a pebble dropped into a pond.

While we looked with hardly beating hearts at the place where she had sunk, all was blotted out in thick darkness again.  With a roar, as of a thousand thunders, the tempest came once more, but from the opposite direction now.  As we were under no sail, we ran little risk of being caught aback; but, even had we, nothing could have been done, the vessel being utterly out of control, besides the impossibility of getting about.  It so happened, however, that when the storm burst upon us again, we were stern on to it, and we drove steadily for a few moments until we had time to haul to the wind again.  Great heavens! how it blew!  Surely, I thought, this cannot last long—­just as we sometimes say of the rain when it is extra heavy.  It did last, however, for what seemed an interminable time, although any one could see that the sky was getting kindlier.  Gradually, imperceptibly, it took off, the sky cleared, and the tumult ceased, until a new day broke in untellable beauty over a revivified world.

Years afterwards I read, in one of the hand-books treating of hurricanes and cyclones, that “in the centre of these revolving storms the sea is so violent that few ships can pass through it and live.”  That is true talk.  I have been there, and bear witness that but for the build and sea-kindliness of the cachalot, she could not have come out of that horrible cauldron again, but would have joined that nameless unfortunate whom we saw succumb, “never again heard of.”  As it was, we found two of the boats stove in, whether by breaking sea or crushing wind nobody knows.  Most of the planking of the bulwarks was also gone, burst outward by the weight of the water on deck.  Only the normal quantity of water was found in the well on sounding, and not even a rope-yarn was gone from aloft.  Altogether, we came out of the ordeal triumphantly, where many a gallant vessel met her fate, and the behaviour of the grand old tub gave me a positive affection for her, such as I have never felt for a ship before or since.