All of a sudden there was a loud crack, and the maintopsail seemed to melt away from the yard-arm as if it were a sheet of ice under a tropic sun. Then, almost instantly, the wind began to fall until in a few moments a candle would have burned on deck. “Clew down the mizzentopsail,” roared the skipper, as he sprang for the halyards, and in a moment the watch were all struggling with that bit of canvas and had it rolled snug on the yard in less time than it takes to tell it. “Keep her northeast b’ north,” he sung out again, as the ship, becoming unmanageable, began switching and plunging into a high lumpy sea that seemed to come from all points of the compass at once. All around us hung low, thick banks of heavy, dark, and oily-looking clouds, their lower edges almost resting on the heaving ocean. The air had become as warm as if we had suddenly entered the tropics. In the dull, uncertain light I thought I noticed something white on the water to the southward. Then, above the thundering of the seas that fell on the ship’s deck, I could hear a deepening murmur. It swelled into a deep roaring as the hurricane, driving the tops of the seas before it until they were as level as a plain of driven snow, bore down on our starboard quarter. With a rush that made every shroud and backstay sing to the strain, until the booming roar was deafening, it struck us and away we went before it. The foretopsail held long enough to get the ship’s head off before it; then it parted from the clews and jackstay and disappeared like a giant bird into the drift ahead. It blew so hard that it almost lifted me from my feet as I crossed the deck. Captain Crojack fastened the cabin door and pulled the slide to the companionway, for he knew that, running deep as we were, it would only be a few minutes before the sea would begin to board us. “By th’ sowl av Saint Patrick, we struck th’ cintre av it this time, sure,” said O’Toole, who, with Brown and a couple of hands in my watch, sheltered themselves behind the mizzen. “It puts me in moind av th’ time we had on th’ _Eagle_ frigate whin we struck into th’ cintre av one o’ thim circular storms ter th’ north’ard av th’ Bermudas. There was a parrot on board owned by an Irishman in my mess, and ivery time a sea would strike an’ board us th’ baste would laugh outrajis. Th’ fellow was so scared av th’ oncanny cratur that he thought it was Davy Jones himself. So he took him ter th’ spar-deck in his cage an’ opens th’ door, an’ says, ‘Scat, ye baste!’ an’ th’ burd was gone t’ leeward like a streak av green lightnin’. “‘Now laugh, ye divil incarnate!’ he yelled, ’an’ thank yer stars me conscience previnted me from wringing yer bloody neck!’