Upon our arrival the first thing I noticed was that the Captain, the first luff, and the master were all standing together close under the shelter of the weather bulwarks, apparently holding a sort of council of war. The weather, I thought, looked somewhat more promising than it had done when I went below; for the sky to windward had broken, displaying a very wild and stormy sunset, it is true, yet the fact that the heavy, lowering canopy of cloud had broken up at all seemed to indicate that the worst would soon be over. But it was still blowing very heavily, and while the atmosphere was now quite clear of mist, permitting us a view to the extreme confines of the horizon, everything--the wild, tumultuously heaving sea to windward, and the land ahead and to leeward--showed a preternaturally hard outline. Point du Raz was now about three miles distant and bore about a point, or maybe a trifle more on the lee-bow, with the surf breaking furiously upon the reef which projected beyond it, while the leeward extremity of the reef jutting out from the easternmost extremity of the Isle de Seins lay dead ahead, smothered in boiling surf, the passage between the two reefs now looking alarmingly narrow. And it was through that passage we must win safety! I was of course on the lee-side of the deck, so I could only catch an occasional disconnected word of what passed between the trio to windward, but I presently gathered that the master seemed to be endeavouring to persuade the skipper to wear ship while we still had room enough to execute that manoeuvre; but Captain Vavassour appeared to be objecting, upon the plea that, once on the other side of the point, we had nothing more to fear, whereas, should we wear ship now, we should be heading for the Penmarks as soon as we got round upon the other tack, and should reach them, and be faced with the task of weathering them during the hours of darkness. The skipper, it was evident, was all for grappling with the nearest danger, for the reason that we should at least have light enough to see what we were doing; and Mr Howard seemed to side with him. "But, sir," remonstrated the master desperately, "have you considered what must inevitably happen if a flaw of wind should come round that point, at the critical moment, and break us off, as it is likely enough to do?"