But search as we will in the blackness ahead we cannot make it out, until, our eyes having become more accustomed to the darkness, it shows up like a pin prick in a black curtain, showing now and then, and lost to sight as much as it is visible. The gale has grown stronger and is almost from dead ahead, while the huge waves cascade over the forecastle, roaring and tumbling—gray with phosphorescence in the darkness. The eastern sky pales slowly, and gradually the morning comes, ghostly and without colour. The sky is gray, the sea is gray, flecked everywhere with white, and nothing is in sight as daylight comes. The lightship is invisible, and everywhere about us is the tumbling water. We go below and have breakfast from a table on which the racks are placed to keep the dishes from crashing to the deck. We return to the bridge, and still the lightship is not visible. Have we passed it? No, we learn. For the last four hours we have made, perhaps, two miles, for a heavily laden freighter capable of only nine knots at the best is not able to make much headway against the current and such a gale off Hatteras. By noon the lightship can be seen intermittently in its waste of boiling sea, and all afternoon we can see it occasionally as it slowly passes astern. But we have checked our position from it and have a new “point of departure” from which to lay our course for the south. During the evening the captain tells us that the barometer has risen somewhat and that we may look for fine weather in the morning. We turn in, hoping for fine weather, but glad to have been through a Cape Hatteras blow. And in the morning we look out through our port on to a summer sea. A swell is running, it is true, and the ship still rolls, but the sky is blue, the sea is blue, and a school of porpoises are leaping gaily from the water alongside. [Illustration: THE SAILS OF A FOUR-MASTED SHIP _(1) Foresail; (2) Mainsail; (3) Crossjack; (4) Jigger; (5) Lower foretopsail; (6) Lower main topsail; (7) Lower mizzen topsail; (8) Lower jigger topsail; (9) Upper fore topsail; (10) Upper main topsail; (11) Upper mizzen topsail; (12) Upper jigger topsail; (13) Fore topgallant sail; (14) Main topgallant sail; (15) Mizzen topgallant sail; (16) Jigger topgallant sail; (17) Fore royal; (18) Main royal; (19) Mizzen royal; (20) Jigger royal; (21) Fore skysail; (22) Main skysail; (23) Mizzen skysail; (24) Jigger skysail; (25) Flying jib; (26) Outer jib; (27) Jib; (28) Fore topmast staysail; (29) Spanker; (30) Buntlines; (31) Leechlines; (32) Reeftackles; (33) Braces; (34) Foresheet; (35) Fore topmast staysail sheet; (36) Jib-sheet; (37) Outer jib-sheet; (38) Flying jib-sheet._ ] Our course has been changed to southwest, and after breakfast the captain and his mates take the sun’s altitude, work out our longitude, and compare notes. At noon our latitude is worked out, and about four o’clock our longitude again.