I sprang to the fore-braces and besought the men near me, for God's sake, to drag upon the lee one--and that as if their life hung upon it--when Westwood caught me by the arm. I merely shouted through my hands into his ear to go aft to Jacobs and tell him to keep her head a _single point_ up, whatever might happen, to the last,--then I pulled with the men at the brace till it was fast, and scrambled up again to the bowsprit heel. Jove! how she surged to it: the little canvass we had strained like to burst; the masts trembled, and the spars aloft bent like whip-shafts, everything below groaning again; while the swell and the blast together made you dizzy, as you watched the white eddies rising and boiling out of the dark--her cutwater shearing through it and the foam, as if you were going under it. The sound of the hurricane and the surf seemed to be growing together into one awful roar,--my very brain began to turn with the pitch I was wrought up to--and it appeared next moment we should heave far up into the savage hubbub of breakers. I was wearying for the crash and the wild confusion that would follow--when all of a sudden, still catching the fierce rush of the gale athwart her quarter into the fore-course, which steadied her though she shuddered to it--all on a sudden the dark mass of the land seemed as it were parting ahead of her, and a gleam of pale sky opened below the dusk into my very face. I no more knew what I was doing, by this time, nor where we were, than the spar before me,--till again, the light broadened, glimmering low betwixt the high land and a lump of rising level on the other bow. I hurried aft past the confused knots of men holding on to the lee of the bulwarks, and seized a spoke of the wheel. "Tom," shouted I to Westwood, "run and let free the spanker on the poop! Down with the helm--down with it, Jacobs, my lad!" I sang out; "never mind spars or canvass!" Down went the helm--the spanker helped to luff her to the strength of the gust--and away she went up to port, the heavy swells rolling her in, while the rush into her staysail and forecourse came in one terrible flash of roaring wind,--tearing first one and then the other clear out of the belt-ropes, though the loose spanker abaft was in less danger, and the way she had from both was enough to take her careening round the point into its lee. By heavens! there were the streaks of soft haze low over the rising moon, under the broken clouds, beyond a far line of dim fringy woods, she herself just tipping the hollow behind, big and red--when right down from over the cloud above us came a spout of rain, then a sheet of it lifting to the blast as it howled across the point. "Stand by to let go the larboard anchor!" I sang out through the trumpet; and Jacobs put the helm fully down at the moment, till she was coming head to wind, when I made forward to the mates and men. "Let--go!" I shouted: not a look turned against me, and away thundered