clear dive with her nose under water through a white seething sea that seemed to swell round the whole horizon: the black bank of cloud off our weather-beam towered like icebergs against the cold green sky to south-east, the stars glittering and twinkling over it, with little hazy rings round them, after a fashion that one of us liked no more than the other. About midnight, we had got everything off her to the two small storm-staysails, main and fore, the wind blowing great guns, and the half moon shining right over the long bank, as if the back of it were dead-white; while betwixt it and the washing glimmer of moonlight half-way, you'd have thought the black heave of the ridges vanished into a bulk of shadow ten times blacker, save for the heads of spray tossing dimly over in it here and there. All at once, in the very height of the gale, as the black floating clouds from the bank began to cross over the gray scud flying fast aloft, a blue flash of lightning shot zig-zag into the very comb of a wave ahead of us, then came the clap of thunder, loud enough to be heard above the wind, and in half a minute there was a sudden lull. You saw the fleecy rags of scud actually settling together under the dark vapour moving above them, and heard nothing but the vast washing welter of the billows rising and seething for miles round, as if the world were water, while the schooner rolled helplessly away, with her storm-staysails flapping, into the trough. The midshipman almost gasped as he looked to me--not from fear, but as much as to say, "What next?" Our strange mate stood against the fife-rail of the mainmast, apparently too intent on the sky and sea for speaking. For my own part, I let go of my belaying pin, and half tumbled to the wheel, almost knocking the sailor down in my haste to put the helm hard up--for I saw how the blast was to come, fairly before the beam, upon us. "Hard a-starboard with it!" shouted I; "haul down the main-staysail there--let her fall off as she rises!" The last words were never heard, for next moment there was another flash of lightning, this time a blaze all round into the troughs of the sea; I saw a body of mist coming down upon us from south-east, through which the gale struck her on the starboard beam, having suddenly shifted eight points or so. The heavy rolling swell from north-east was close aboard, and as soon as I knew what I was about, here she was leaning over to the full tremendous force of the storm, without power to surge ahead, though struggling to rise like a cart-horse down on his knees with a load uphill of him. 'Twas by instinct, as they say, I found myself scrambling along to her weather main-channels, where I managed to get out on the side, slippery as it was, and drenched with the blinding showers of spray. I had got my knife at work, cutting the lanyards of the shrouds to let the mainmast go, when I saw Snelling creep after me, like a fearless