I gripped close the quarter-deck railing, and drew myself aft to the shelter of the wheelhouse, where, securing myself from being blown away like a piece of paper, I watched the sea. It rose behind us in huge mountains, the summits of which were always combing over and sliding down the weltering flanks of the wave,--not like the surf on a shore, but pushed over like snow; and as a wave overtook us lying in the bottom of the valley, it so overhung that it seemed impossible that when it broke it should not bury us; but the stern was always caught by the forefoot of it, and the old ship began to rise, and went up, up, up, until I was dizzy. Then we hovered on the summit a moment, looking out on such an expanse of gigantic waves as I had never pictured to myself, the distance lost in the driving spray; and, while I looked, the wave passed from under us, and we went down and down with a rapidity of descent which was almost like falling from a balloon. Then, after another moment's rest in the valley, came the shuddering half apprehension of the next wave as it rose above us, threatening again, and then, after again soaring aloft, down again into the driving of the spray; the old ship rolling, plunging, and now and then quivering, as some side wave struck her, with a complication of motions, sidelong and headlong, the huge waves flying before us and yet carrying us on,--wild motions, rolling, pitching, sinking down the long green slope into the valley, to be flung up into the tumult of wind and wave again. In all this complexity of forces we were as helpless as feathers in the wind, cut off from mother earth as much as if we were carried away on the clouds; the feeling of absolute insignificance growing on one as the ship drove on, the creaking of the ship and the hissing rush of the waters hardly audible for the shrieking of the gale through the rigging. In all my life I have never so understood the utter impotence and triviality of humanity as I felt it then.