One of them waved his hand to signify that he understood what I wanted; and then they all took hold of the line, and, with it grasped firmly in their hands, made their way cautiously in toward the hull, we watching their movements, meanwhile, in a state of the most intense anxiety and suspense. For now that we were within a biscuit-toss of them the appalling precariousness and peril of their situation became fully apparent to us; more completely so, indeed, than it probably was to the unfortunate fellows themselves. For, huddled together as they were in the rigging, they were sheltered to some extent by the hull of the brig, and were thus unable to clearly see and measure the stupendous proportions of the vast roaring mountains of foam-capped water that came hissing and swooping down upon them from to windward, each huge comber seemingly sentient with a full determination to overwhelm and engulf the already stricken and helpless fabric that lay prone and waterlogged at their mercy; while we, from the superior elevation of our buoyant deck, could look over and beyond the nearly submerged hull, and watch with breathless anxiety the swoop of every giant wave as it surged down upon the wreck and buried her in a blinding smother of seething, milk-white foam. But, beaten down, inert, and waterlogged as was the brig, her cargo was evidently of such a character as to impart a considerable measure of buoyancy to her; for though every sea that broke over her completely buried her for the moment, she invariably reappeared on the hinder slope of the baffled comber, apparently little or none the worse for her momentary submergence. Her triumphant survival, indeed, of these continuous and overwhelming onslaughts soon convinced me that her crew had little to fear from the prospect of her speedy foundering; their danger lay not in any such probability, but consisted in the likelihood of their being torn from their precarious hold in the rigging by every sea that swept and raged over them.