For some time my consternation was so heavy that I sat mechanically staring into that part of the thickness where the boat had disappeared, without giving the least heed to the sea or to the wreck. It was _then_ blowing in earnest, the ocean still densely shrouded with flying vapor, and an ugly bit of a sea racing over the swell that rolled its volumes to windward. A smart shock and fall of water on to the forecastle startled me into sudden perception of a real and imminent danger. The fore-scuttle was closed, but the main and companion hatchways yawned opened to the weather; there were no bulwarks worth talking of to increase the wreck’s height of side, and to hinder the free tumbling of the surge on to the decks, so if the wind increased and the sea grew heavier, the hulk must inevitably fill and go down like a thunderbolt! It would be idle to try to express the thoughts which filled me. I was like one stunned: now casting an eye at the sea to observe if the billows were increasing, now with a heart of lead watching the water frothing upon the deck, as the hull heaved from one side to another; then straining my sight with a mad passion of eagerness into the vapor that shut off all view of the ocean to within a cable’s length of me. There was nothing to be done. Even could I have met with tarpaulins, there was no sailor’s skill in me to spread and secure them over the open hatches. However, when an hour had passed in this way, I took notice of a small failure of the wind, though there was no lightening of the impenetrable mist. The folds of the swell had diminished, and the sea was running steadily; the hull with her broadside dead on, rose and fell with regularity, and though at long intervals the surge struck her bow, and blew in crystals over the head, or fell in scores of bucketfuls upon the deck, nothing more than spray wetted the after-part of her.