A violent snow-storm struck the _Sagamore_ that evening, soon covering the decks with a mantle of white. After it ceased the wind nearly failed, and it was decided to put the ship on the other tack, so as to be in readiness to receive the south-easter which was felt to be at hand. When the passengers came on deck after supper, the whole southern horizon was black as pitch, sea and sky blending together in one dark, lowering mass. All hands were called to strip the ship; halyards were let go, sheets slackened, buntlines hauled in, and then the men, in rubber boots and oilers, climbed the rigging and went out upon the swaying yards. The gale struck her before the work was concluded; the icy polar wind was soon screeching through the rigging, to the accompaniment of whirling snow-flakes and flying spray; hail-stones pattered on the deck; and amidst all this, the port watch had to work an hour overtime before it was possible to go below and get supper. It is not an enviable task,—furling stiff, wet sails, one after another, while a bitter wind blows with a force that makes it necessary to hold on with one hand, to avoid being blown into the sea, while you work with the other—and all this at an elevation of sixty or seventy feet above the deck. The wind kept getting into the belly of the half-frozen sails, making them slippery as inflated balloons, and causing the men ten times the usual work to get them laid on the yards; while the pelting snow and hail, combined with the wild plunges of the ship, made it difficult to retain their precarious footing. But the job was finished at last, and grog served out. Mr. Marsh came below cold and wet, in spite of his oilers, and his eyes heavy from loss of sleep. “Isn’t this as bad a gale as you were ever in?” asked Hartley. “They were stretching life-lines on the quarter-deck when we came below, which is certainly unusual.” The mate looked at him a minute, and then burst out irrelevantly, “I’d give a month’s pay to have the son of a sea-cook here who wrote ‘A life on the ocean wave.’ Hang me if I wouldn’t heave him overboard!” And he proceeded to spread a blanket on the floor before the stove, brought a pillow from his room, and threw himself down in his clothes without more words. The passengers spent the evening at the cabin windows, watching the booming seas roll on board. Both knew they were in for a night of it, and upon retiring, took the precaution to place the “weatherboards” in the front side of their berths, that they might not be pitched out before morning.