Now there was something in all this that began at moments quite to bewilder one, the more excited the state was it put you in. There was nothing for it but to push on, and see what might come of it. Indeed, the weather favoured us better on our present course than on any other; and I felt, if I didn't keep active, I should go distracted. 'Twas almost as if what Jones said had a truth in it, and a sort of a power beyond one were drawing the schooner the way she steered; while, at the same time, there was every little while somewhat new in the extraordinary looks of things to hold you anxious. Even a flying touch of a squall we had about midnight didn't the least do away with the whiteness of the water all around: on the contrary, as the dark cloud crept down upon us, widening on both sides like smoke, the face of the sea seemed to whiten and whiten, casting up a ghastly gleam across the cloud, with its ripples frothing and creaming: till, not knowing _how_ things might go hereabouts, you almost expected the first rush of the wind to send it all in a flame to our mastheads. Then up she rose on a surge like a snow-drift, and off we drove heeling over to it, gaffs lowered and canvass down, everything lost sight of, save the white sea heaving up against the mist; while the clear-coloured plash of it through our weather bulwarks showed it was water sure enough. The squall went off to leeward, however, the rain hissing like ink into the swell it left, and spotting it all over till the last drops seemed to sink in millions of separate sparkles as far as you could see. The schooner rose from one heave to another to an even keel on the smooth length of it, hoisting her spanking gaffs, hauling aft the sheets, and slipping ahead once more to a breeze fed by the rain. As the sky cleared, the dead white glare the water sent up into it was such, you didn't know the one from the other toward the horizon; and in the midst there was only the smooth faint surface, brushing whiter with the breeze, as if it was nothing else kept it from going out of sight; with a few streaky clouds turning themselves out like wool in a confused rift of the air aloft; the schooner walking in it without ever a glimpse of a shadow on one side or another; while, as for seeing a sail on the horizon, you might as well have looked for a shred of paper. It wasn't light, neither, nor was it haze; nothing but a dead colour off the very sea's face--for the schooner rose and plunged without letting you see a hair's-breadth of her draught below the water-line. Every man rubbed his eyes, as if it were all some kind of a dream, and none the less when suddenly we were right upon a long patch of black stripes winding away through the white, like so many sea-serpents, come up to breathe, with both ends of them lost in the faintness. Nobody stirred, or said, "Look-out;" stripe after stripe she went slipping through them as if they'd been ghosts, without a word or an extra turn of the wheel.