At this, of course, I stood aside at once; and he shouted again, "Hoist the jib and fore-topmast-staysail--stand by to set fore-course!" By Jove! this was the way to pay the ship _head_ off, instead of stern off, from the blast when it came--and to let her drive before it at no trifle of a rate, wherever _that_ might take her! "_Down_ with that spanker, Mr Macleod, d'ye hear!" roared Captain Williamson again; and certainly I did wonder what he meant to do with the ship. But his manner was so decided, and 'twas so natural for the captain to strain a point to come on deck in the circumstances, that I saw he must have some trick of seamanship above _me_, or some special knowledge of the coast,--and I waited in a state of the greatest excitement for the first stroke of the tornado. He waved the second and third mates forward to their posts--the Indiaman sheering and backing, like a frightened horse, to the long slight swell and the faint flaw of the land air. The black arch to windward began to rise again, showing a terrible white stare reaching deep in, and a blue dart of lightning actually ran zig-zag down before our glaring fore-to'gallant-mast. Suddenly the captain had looked at me, and we faced each other by the gleam; and quiet, easy-going man as he was commonly, it just flashed across me there was something extraordinarily wild and _raised_ in his pale visage, strange as the air about us made every one appear. He gave a stride towards me, shouting "Who are--" when the thunder-clap took the words out of his tongue, and next moment the tornado burst upon us, fierce as the wind from a cannon's month. For one minute the Seringapatam heeled over to her starboard streak, almost broadside on, and her spars toward the land,--all on her beam was a long ragged white gush of light and mist pouring out under the black brow of the clouds, with a trampling eddying roar up into the sky. The swell plunged over her weather-side like the first break of a dam, and as we scrambled up to the bulwarks, to hold on for bare life, you saw a roller, fit to swamp us, coming on out of the sheet of foam--when crash went mizen-topmast and main-to'gallant-mast: the ship payed swiftly off by help of her head-sails, and, with a leap like a harpooned whale, off she drove fair before the tremendous sweep of the blast.