The whistling noise through the rigging, together with the rattling of blocks and sheets, was really dismal, and the gale kept encreasing with such fury as had never been witnessed by the oldest mariner on board. The sun had set, on the preceding evening, with all those direful omens which are the well known forerunners of bad weather, while the black and lowering clouds, banked up in wild and broken masses, foretold its continuance. Daylight, so anxiously looked out for, disclosed to our view the horrors by which we were surrounded. The tempest had by this time gained a degree of violence that can be conceived only by such as have voyaged in those latitudes, and at its mercy our poor weather-beaten ship, labouring and struggling against its fury, was allowed, (or rather forced), to drift considerably off her course, in consequence of the helm being dismantled and unmanageable. With elastic bound she rose on the top of each successive wave, then fell as nobly into the furrows, seeming as if despair had given her strength, while the waters with dreadful noise rushed past her quivering sides, and with their accumulated weight occasionally broke upon the decks, sweeping off bulwarks, boats, and every timber on the gangways; while all her masts, yards and spars aloft, bent and strained beneath the fearful blast that howled in dismal gusts around. The sea, agitated into white and boiling foam, was running mountains high, and its angry surface presented a most desolate and wintry aspect. Throughout this day the hurricane raged without the slightest intermission, every now and then a ponderous billow, coming with the force of a battering-ram upon her broadside, made the little sea-boat tremble to her very keel. She soon began to leak in all her seams, and the crew, harassed and fatigued, relieved each other by turns, while lashed to the pumps they worked incessantly. All but the seamen were down below, none daring to venture from those regions even for a moment. Pent up within the dark and gloomy limits of the cabin, we remained in awful durance, scarcely giving utterance to a word; our silence occasionally disturbed by a waterfall, tumbling through the sky-light, or companion hatchway, and leaving the steerage and cabin floor in a perfect deluge. Such a day of misery was never passed; and the Captain, who had been under many a stiff norwester, confessed that a gale like this he had not before encountered. The sun set with the same forbidding aspect as on the day preceding, and the night began without the slightest prospect of a change;--every one seemed to be in a state of hopeless despair, and were it not for that buoyancy of spirit, which is natural to man under every circumstance, none would have been capable of the least exertion.