One moment we would think we heard breakers to port, the next to starboard, but always it proved to be an illusion. It was the same with the sunken reefs and sandbanks, which we imagined we saw from time to time; they were only dark patches and eddies in the water, due to the plunge of the breaking seas. All this, however, we could see only as if through a veil, for the storm-scourged masses of rain and spindrift blurred the whole surface of the sea. Again and again, when the seas came charging down and leapt upon her, the little _Aud_ lay over so far to starboard that we thought she would never get up again; and when, on the return roll, she met an oncoming sea, the port end of the bridge was often under water. Suddenly, some two hundred yards to starboard, two birds appeared, low down over the sea. Did that mean rocks? 'Port the helm!'... 'What in the name of Heaven's wrong now?' 'The compass!' shouts the quartermaster, hanging on to the spokes with a desperate grip, to keep the helm hard over. God in heaven! Is everything at once in league against us? In sober fact the compass seemed to have suddenly gone mad. The compass-card spun round like a teetotum, whirling faster and faster. It was only by the direction of the seas that we could tell that the ship's head was now slowly coming round to port. And the run of the seas was for the moment all we had to steer by, for the compass was utterly useless. It pointed one moment North, the next South-West, and absolutely refused to steady. Meanwhile, from time to time the shouts of the leadsmen aft reached one's ear, but they were almost unintelligible. In the end they made shift to give us the soundings by signing with their fingers. But the depths were too uncertain to give us any help. Now, however, more and more birds showed up to starboard--fifty, a hundred, whole flocks appeared and whirled wildly, with frightened screechings, through the air. There could no longer be any doubt. Yonder, a couple of cables southward, lay the rocks. We were on the very brink of destruction. 'Hard a-port! Quick, man, quick!' I shot the words out with all my strength and pointed to port with my hand, but no one understood a word. The hurricane was at its worst and the wind whistled and howled so that it was impossible to hear an order. Fortunately, however, Mathiesen, good seaman that he was, had already put the helm over without waiting to be told. It was our only chance of clearing the reefs. And now came the most anxious and perilous moments of the whole voyage. It seemed as though we had plunged into a seething, raging whirlpool, from which there could be no escape. The engines were now running at full speed. We had the seas right abeam, and they did what they liked with us, but that was the only course that offered the slightest chance of getting clear.