Ere I could speak, the heavens were split in twain by a blast of lightning that looked to fly like a dazzling shaft of flame from the north sheer over our mastheads into the south. It was almost instantly followed by a crash of thunder, ear-splitting as the explosion of the batteries of a dozen first-rates all discharged at one moment. And then fell the rain in a whole body of water, charged with hailstones as big as pigeon's eggs. The fall raised such an uproar on our decks that you looked to see the whole substantial fabric shattered by it. The surface of the sea foamed in fire to that lashing of water and hail. There was now a perpetual blaze of lightning, but the thunder merely deepened the prodigious noise of the rushing wet without, its claps being distinguishable in the dreadful tumult. We had immediately withdrawn to the cabin, and closing the door, stood looking on through the window. The decks were full of water, which, cascading through the ports and all other freeing orifices, added its roaring to the other notes of the tempest. The ship seemed on fire to as high as we could see with the hellish and continual flaming of the lightning. 'Twas of several colours, and in the same breath you saw spars, rigging, bulwark-rails, all blazing out as though lumined with brushes dipped in blue and crimson, and star-white and yellow and dark violet fires. But no wind as yet; not a breath! That I could tell by the droop of the fore-course hanging by its gear, and faintly fanning dark and wet from its yard. But I knew it could not be far off. Those sounds I had heard as of a thousand affrighted wild beasts were--my ear well knew the noise--the echoings high in the middle air of a prodigious wind bellowing as it swept the ocean into white rage. My heart beat swiftly; all was so fearfully real that I could not grasp the supernatural conditions of the life of this ship and crew, which had otherwise assured me that the Curse that triumphed over the monarch Death must be superior to the wildest hurricane that ever piled the ocean into mountains.