It chanced that on this same day there occurred an incident that had nearly verified the judgment of any man who should have accepted the visit of the apparition as a menace. After loitering at the dinner-table in chat, I put on my hat and jacket and followed the captain and Mr. Owen on deck. It was blowing very fresh, and though the sun still nearly centred the heavens we were sailing under, the weight of the blast put an edge into the feel of it. But it was a glorious, invigorating, cordial draught; and I stood for awhile with my hand upon the companion-hood, deeply breathing, and relishing to the inmost pulses of my being that shouting musical tide of liberal gale, blue and salt, yet sweet as sugar when it came charged with the damp of the spray. The brown scud was flying off the working ridges on the horizon, and the ship was bowed to her channels, charging the sea-flashes, with the forecastle reeling in the frequent thickness of foam flying athwart. She was carrying all she had of plain sail and clearly more than she needed, for I had not been five minutes on deck when the captain ordered the three royals to be clewed up and furled, and other sail to be taken in. I continued standing at the hatch watching two men on the main royal yard stow the sail there. It was a giddy sight to my girlish eye. Indeed I had always found something wonderful in the agility and fearlessness of the crew when they sprang aloft, and slided out upon the yards, and struggled with the canvas that soared in huge bladders from their grasp. I gazed up at the two fellows and tried to figure the image our ship would make viewed from that height, and whilst I was picturing a narrow streak of hull rushing headlong with a wild play of dazzle on either hand of her, and all aslant to her trucks, with yard-arms pointing skywards and stirless canvas thrilling like a thousand drums out of the violet hollows, I was startled by a loud cry directly overhead: and looking up I spied a man in the mizzen-top, leaning off with one hand upon a shroud, and pointing eagerly to leewards with the other, whilst he cried: 'There's a whole coast of water a-coming along.' I directed my eyes at the lee line of the sea, where I saw, nearly at the distance of the horizon, but clearly coming along at a prodigious rate directly against the wind and rushing surge, a wall of water: it was rounding its pouring volume high above the level of the sea, and the vast bulk of it, stretching north and south, blazed with the flashing of the sunlight upon the savage leaps and shattering recoils of the surge it was rolling up against. Mrs. Burke, losing her wits at the sight, shrieked out: 'Oh, Edward, it will drown us!' Scarcely had she said this when her husband, who had taken but one glance to leeward, roared out: 'Hard up, hard up with the helm! Aft to the weather-braces. Square away fore and aft! Lively, my lads, for Jesus' sake! If it takes us abeam it'll sink the ship!'