The massive beams under her upper-deck coil cracked and snapped with a noise resembling that of small artillery, almost drowning the hideous roar of the wind as it moaned and howled through the rigging, jerking and straining the little storm-sails as though it meant to tear them from the yards. Those in the impoverished cabins on the main deck had little sleep that night, for the upper-deck planks above them were "working themselves free," as sailors say; and beyond a doubt they were infinitely more free than easy, for they groaned under the pressure of the coil with a dreadful uproar, and availed themselves of the opportunity to let in a little light, with a good deal of water, at every roll. The sea, too, kept striking with dull, heavy violence against the vessel's bows, forcing its way through hawse-holes and ill-closed ports with a heavy slush; and thence, hissing and winding aft, it roused the occupants of the cabins aforesaid to a knowledge that their floors were under water, and that the flotsam and jetsam noises they heard beneath were only caused by their outfit for the voyage taking a cruise of its own in some five or six inches of dirty bilge. Such was Sunday night, and such was a fair average of all the nights throughout the week, varying only from bad to worse. On Monday things became desperate. The barometer was lower--and, as a matter of course, the wind and sea were infinitely higher--than the day before. It was singular, but at twelve o'clock the sun pierced through the pall of clouds and shone brilliantly for half an hour, and during that brief time it blew as it had not often blown before. So fierce was this gust that its roar drowned every other sound, and it was almost impossible to give the watch the necessary orders for taking in the close-reefer foresail, which, when furled, almost left the Agamemnon under bare poles, though still surging through the water at speed. This gust passed, the usual gale set in, now blowing steadily from the southwest, and taking us more and more out of our course each minute. Every hour the storm got worse, till toward five in the afternoon, when it seemed at its height--and raged with such a violence of wind and sea--that matters really looked "desperate" even for such a strong and large ship as the Agamemnon. The upper-deck coil had strained her decks throughout excessively, and though this mass in theory was supposed to prevent her rolling so quickly and heavily as she would have done without it, yet still she heeled over to such an alarming extent that fears of the coil itself shifting again occupied every mind, and it was accordingly strengthened with additional shores bolted down to the deck. The space occupied by the main coil below had deprived the