It was as Vanderdecken had said. The gale had broke and we might look for a clear sky presently, yet the sea still ran fearfully high, and the wash and weltering of it along the sea-line that was now indifferently clear, suggested a vast sierra whose sides beyond were in sunshine, whilst over our trucks lay the sombre twilight of the tempest. There was still a fine rain in the air, though not such as to cloud the ocean, but I was so fascinated by the picture of the Flying Dutchman's fight with the mighty combers which rolled at her from the north and west that I lingered gazing till I was pretty near as soaked as when I had been fished up and brought aboard. But a sailor makes no trouble of a wet jacket so long as he has a dry shirt for his back, which I had, thanks to Vanderdecken, who had been so good as to lend me several shifts of linen. I do not know that I ever saw or heard of a ship that threw from her such bodies of foam as did this vessel. She would rise at the sea buoyantly enough, yet at every lean-to to windward for a giddy sliding swoop into the hollow, she hurled an enormous space of seething and spitting and flashing froth many fathoms from her, into which she would sink as though it were snow and so squatter, as 'tis termed, and lie there whilst you might count to ten or fifteen, ere rising out of it to the irresistible heave of the next leviathan sea. Often had I watched this picture during the six days, but the light breaking around the whole circle of the sea, like radiance dully streaming through greased paper, the decreasing force of the wind, that while leaving the surges still monstrous, suffered the ship to fall with deader weight to windward, thus enlarging the snow-like surface she cast from her whilst rendering it fiercer in its boiling, made this particular example of the ship's sea-going qualities a marvel in my sight, and I stood for a long time looking and looking.