It had got to a clear, dry, north-easterly gale, that shook our canvass every time she lifted, singing through the ropes, and bitter cold. Long and heavy as the roll of the sea was, the sky was as keen and clear as glass all round about and aloft, save the mist kicked up by the spray off a wave here and there. If a rag of white cloud appeared, it was blown away, and you saw the black wrinkled side of one wave at a time, a mile wide, you'd have said, freckled all over with spots of foam, and its ridge heaving against the eye of the blast. The waves had begun to break shorter. The schooner, buoyant as she was, and sharp as a dolphin, pitched and rolled at times like mad, and the men forward were standing by to let go the fore-halliards, throat and peak, to ease her a little: when Jones pointed out the bank of gray cloud ahead of us, scarce to be seen through the troughs of the water, except when she lifted well upon a swell of sea. The sun going down in a wild red glare to leeward of us, threw a terrible glitter across the huge slant of one single wave that rose stretching away far and wide from her very bow, then brought out the sulky wrinkled blue in it; the hissing green crests curled over to the very sunset, as it were, while we sunk slowly into the long dark lulling trough, and saw the broken shaft of a rainbow stand glimmering for a moment or two into a black hollow right ahead, when the gale drove it back upon us like an arrow, as the schooner urged through the breast of the next wave. I looked from Snelling to the new mate, who still held on by a belaying-pin and watched the clouds, giving me back a glance that showed he thought the matter more serious than ordinary. "The sooner we strip her to the storm-staysails," said I quickly, as we fell into the trough again, "the better, I think. If it blows harder, we must lie-to with her at once." My eye was anxiously fixed on Jones, for large as the schooner was, between two and three hundred tons, yet no craft in the world is so nice to bring to the wind in a gale, with a heavy sea running. Scudding before it might have done for the frigate, with her full bows, and spars high enough to keep her main-topsail full in spite of the troughs; but even that would have taken us out of our course after the Indiaman. Besides that, to tell the truth, I didn't sufficiently understand fore-and-aft rigged craft in all weathers yet, to be quite sure of what I did at a pinch like the present. "Yes, yes, sir," answered he; "but if you'll take an older man's advice, before that you'll wear her round on the other tack to it. We've the worst to come, or else I'm mistaken, sir."--"You're accustomed to schooners?" asked I firmly, and gazing him in the face. I saw his lips open in the sweep of the wind through our after-rigging, and he made a sign with his hand, while a gnawing sort of spasm, as it were, shot through the muscles of his jaw, and for a moment he gave me a devilishly fierce, keen glance,