THE WRECK OF THE "GROSVENOR." THE WRECK OF THE "GROSVENOR:" AN ACCOUNT OF _THE MUTINY OF THE CREW AND THE LOSS OF THE SHIP_ WHEN TRYING TO MAKE THE BERMUDAS. _IN THREE VOLUMES._ VOL. III. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1877. (_All rights reserved._) LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. THE WRECK OF THE "GROSVENOR." CHAPTER I. Our next job was to man the port-braces and bring the ship to a westerly course. But before we went to this work the boatswain and I stood for some minutes looking at the appearance of the sky. The range of cloud which had been but a low-lying and apparently a fugitive bank in the north-west at midnight, was now so far advanced as to project nearly over our heads, and what rendered its aspect more sinister was the steely colour of the sky, which it ruled with a line, here and there rugged, but for the most part singularly even, right from the confines of the north-eastern to the limits of the south-western horizon. All the central portion of this vast surface of cloud was of a livid hue, which, by a deception of the eye, made it appear convex, and at frequent intervals a sharp shower of arrowy lightning whizzed from that portion of it furthest away from us, but as yet we could hear no thunder. "When the rain before the wind, then your topsail halliards mind," chaunted the boatswain. "There's rather more nor a quarter o' an inch o' rain there, and there's something worse nor rain astern of it." The gloomiest feature of this approaching tempest, if such it were, was the slowness, at once mysterious and impressive, of its approach. I was not, however, to be deceived by this into supposing that, because it had taken nearly all night to climb the horizon, there was no wind behind it. I had had experience of a storm of this kind, and remembered the observations of one of the officers of the ship, when speaking of it. "Those kind of storms," he said, "are not driven by wind, but create it. They keep a hurricane locked up in their insides, and wander across the sea, on the look-out for ships; when they come across something worth wrecking they let fly. Don't be deceived by their slow pace, and imagine them only thunderstorms. They'll burst like an earthquake in a dead calm over your head, and whenever you see one coming snug your ship right away down to the last reef in her, and keep your stern at it." "I am debating, bo'sun," said I, "whether to bring the ship round or keep her before it. What do you think?"