However, she lay steady, that is, as the compass goes, but rolled fearfully, wallowing deep like a ship half full of water, and shipped such tremendous seas that I constantly expected to hear the crash of the galley stove in. I now shaded my eyes to look astern; not hoping, indeed, to see the steamer near, but expecting at least to find her in sight. But the horizon was a dull blank: not a sign of the vessel to be seen, nothing but the rugged line of water, and the nearer deep dark under the shadow of the leaden pouring clouds. CHAPTER III. In bringing the ship close to the wind in this terrible gale, without springing a spar, we had done what I never should have believed practicable to four men, taking into consideration the size of the ship and the prodigious force of the wind; and when I looked aloft and considered that only a few hours before, so to speak, the ship was carrying all the sail that could be put upon her, and that three men had stripped her of it and put her under a close-reefed main-topsail fit to encounter a raging hurricane, I could not help thinking that we had a right to feel proud of our endurance and spirit. There was no difficulty now in holding the wheel, and, had no worse sea than was now running been promised us, the helm might have been lashed and the vessel lain as comfortably as a smack with her foresail over to windward. The torn sails were making a hideous noise on the yards forward, and as there was no earthly reason why this clamour should be suffered to last, I called to Cornish to get his knife ready and help me to cut the canvas away from the jackstays. We hauled the braces taut to steady the yards, and then went aloft, and in ten minutes severed the fragments of the foresail and topsail, and they blew up into the air like paper, and were carried nearly half a mile before they fell into the sea. The wind was killing up aloft, and I was heartily glad to get on deck again, not only to escape the wind, but on account of the fore-topmast and top-gallant mast, both of which had been heavily tried, and now rocked heavily as the ship rolled, and threatened to come down with the weight of the yards upon them. But neither Cornish nor I had strength enough in us to stay the masts more securely; our journey aloft and our sojourn on the yards, and our fight with the wind to maintain our hold, had pretty well done for us; and in Cornish I took notice of that air of lassitude and dull indifference which creeps upon shipwrecked men when worn out with their struggles, and which resembles in its way the stupor which falls upon persons who are perishing of cold.