The gale at this moment came down in thunder; all above as black as night, all below as white as wool. The Spider shortens sail just in time--the Midge not a pistol-shot ahead on the weatherbow. See, the squall strikes her--her tall lateen sail shines through the more than twilight darkness and the driving rain and spray, like a sea-bird's wing. Mercy! how she lies over! She sinks in the trough of the sea!--Now she rises again, and breasts it gallantly!--There! that's over her bodily; her sails are dark, and sea-washed three parts up. Look! how the clear green water, as she lurches, pours out of the afterleech of the sail like a cascade! Now! she is buried again; no! buoyant as cork--she dances over it like a wild-duck. See! how she tips up her round stern, and slides down the liquid hollow; once more she catches the breeze on the opposite rise of the sea; her sails tearing her along up the watery acclivity, as if they would drag the spars out of her. Now she rushes on the curl of the wave, with her bows and a third of her keel hove out into the air, as if she were going to shoot across, like a flying fish, into the swelling bosom of the next sea. Once more she is hove on her beam-ends, and hid by an intervening billow--Ha!--what a blinding flash, as the blue forked lightning glances from sky to sea, right over where I saw her last!--hark! the splitting crash and stunning reverberations of the shaking thunder, rolling through the empyrean loud as an archangel's voice, until earth and air tremble again. She rights!--she rights!--there! the narrow shred of white canvass gleams again through the mist in the very fiercest of the squall--yes, _there!_--no!--God of my fathers! IT IS BUT A BREAKING WAVE! CHAPTER XII. THE END OF THE YARN. "For now I stand as one upon a rock, Environed with a wilderness of sea; Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, Expecting ever when some envious surge Will in his brinish bowels swallow him." _Titus Andronicus_.