Some heavy water has come aboard in the last three hours, as all sailing vessels are very wet running before a strong wind and sea. At this very moment we shipped a comber over the quarter that broke entirely over the cabin-house with a crash that shook the bulkheads, and the skipper has just sung out, “Clew up the royals.” This is still another fine example of the difference between on and off the wind. It is blowing a fresh gale, as noted before, which means about forty-five miles an hour; yet until this moment we have lugged the three royals without trouble, and only clewed them up because the sea is getting ugly; by the wind we would be under reefed topsails. The “Hosea Higgins” doesn’t seem to run well. Even in this sea, which certainly is not really heavy yet, she is emphatically a wet ship. The “Mandalore,” a “diving-bell,” was drier than the “Higgins” is now, when she was running before a sixty-mile gale. We had no business to take that sea over the quarter a moment ago; indeed, ever since noon we have had heavy, green water on the poop, and an idea of the quantity may be gained when it is said that while the captain was standing by the weather mizzen-shrouds after dinner, a sea washed his legs from under him, and his grip on the mizzentop-sail-halliards was the only thing that prevented his being swept down on the main-deck. All the square windows in the weather-side of the house have been covered with the heavy, solid wooden shutters, as though they were ports in the ship’s side, instead of being inside of and protected by the bulwarks. The glass, which has been wonderfully steady for sixty hours, has commenced to fall, and a heavy gale is probably overhauling us, for easterly gales off the Horn have a hard name. In all our experience at sea we never saw anything like the dampness during the late light weather. No rain fell then, but so heavily charged with moisture was the atmosphere that the water actually ran off the poop as during a shower; and from the top of the wheel-house, in size ten by fifteen feet, we filled two ten-gallon tubs in twelve hours with the moisture that condensed upon it; while down the walls of our room, separated from the dining-room, where the hot stove is, only by the after-cabin, moisture trickled in glistening beads.