Most of them complied, but a few lingered, staring with curiosity at the coming weather. I watched it with amazement, for never before had I seen a storm of wind coming down upon a ship in a sort of wall. One saw the line of it in a ridge of foam whose extremities were lost in the gloom on either hand. It was of a glass-like smoothness all in front of it, and not a breath of air was to be felt when the stormy hissing of it was loud in our ears as it came sweeping up, the clouds on high darting to right and left, and a paler faintness, as of increasing daylight, coming into the air along with it. The bull-like notes of Mr. Prance rang from the poop through the ship. ‘Stand by maintopsail halliards--foretopsail sheets--foretopmast staysail down-haul.’ The wind struck the brig. My eye was upon her, and she disappeared in the shrieking whirl of flying spume as you extinguish a reflection in a mirror by breathing upon the glass. A minute later it was upon us. It smote the Indiaman right abeam, and down she lay in a seething and hissing flatness of boiling waters, stooping yet and yet, till the line of the topgallant bulwark rail looked to be flush with the furious yeasty smother. There were two men at the helm holding the wheel jammed hard over. I swung to a belaying pin on the weather rail, and the poop deck went down from me to leeward at an angle that made one’s eyes reel in the head to look along it. There was a true hurricane note in the bellowing of the wind on high under the rush and disparting of the maddened clouds, and the first flash of it between our masts was as the passage of a score of locomotives racing by at express speed and shrieking as they went.