"If she went ashore in my hands! why, it was like to drive one mad with fear; and I waited for Jacobs to come back, with a brain ready to turn, almost as if I'd have left the wheel to the other helmsman, and run forward into the bows to look out. The captain lay raving and shouting behind me, though no one else could either have heard or seen him; and where the chief officer was all this time surprised me, unless the madman had made away with him, or locked him in his own cabin, in return for being shut up himself--which, in fact, proved to be the case, cunning as it was to send for him so quietly. At length Jacobs struggled aft to me again, and charging him, for Heaven's sake, to steer exactly the course I gave, I drove before the full strength of the squall along decks to the bowsprit, where I held on and peered out. Dead ahead of us was the high line of coast in the dark--not a mile of swell between the ship and it. By this time the low boom of the surf came under the wind, and you saw the breakers lifting all along--not a single opening in them! I had lost sight of my landmarks, and my heart gulped into my mouth--what I felt 'twould be vain to say--till I thought I _did_ make out one short patch of sheer black in the range of foam, scarce so far on our bow as I'd reckoned the fire to have been; indeed, instead of that, it was rather on her weather than her lee bow; and the more I watched it, and the nearer we drove in that five minutes, the broader it was. 'By all that's good!' thought I, 'if a river there is, that must be the mouth of it!' But, by Heavens! on our present course the ship would run just right upon the point--and, to strike the clear water, her foreyard would require to be braced up, able or not, though the force of the tornado would come fearfully on her quarter, then. There was the chance of taking all the masts out of her; but let them stand ten minutes, and the thing was done, when we opened into the lee of the points--otherwise all was over.