I had slept three-quarters of an hour, when I was awakened by the steward rushing into my cabin and hauling upon me like a madman. Being scarcely conscious, I imagined that the mutineers had got on board again, and that here was one of them falling upon me; and having sense enough, I suppose, in my sleepy brain to make me determine to sell my life at a good price, I let fly at the steward's breast and struck him so hard that he roared out, which sound brought me to my senses at once. "What is it?" I cried. "Oh, sir," responded the steward, half dead with terror and the loss of breath occasioned by my blow, "the ship's sinking, sir! We're all going down! I've been told to fetch you up. The Lord have mercy upon us!" I rolled on to the deck in my hurry to leave the bunk, and ran with all my speed up the companion ladder; nor was the ascent difficult, for the ship was on a level keel, pitching heavily indeed, but rolling slightly. Scarcely, however, was my head up through the companion, when I thought it would have been blown off my shoulders. The fury and force of the wind was such as I had never before in all my life experienced. Both the boatswain and Cornish were at the wheel, and, in order to reach them, I had to drop upon my hands and knees and crawl along the deck. When near them I took a grip of the grating and looked around me. The first thing I saw was that the mainsail had blown away from most of the gaskets, and was thundering in a thousand rags upon the yard. The foresail was split in halves, and the port mizzen-topsail sheet had carried away, and the sail was pealing like endless discharges of musketry. All the spars were safe still. The lee braces had been let go, the helm put up, and the ship was racing before a hurricane as furious as a tornado, heading south-east, with a wilderness of foam boiling under her bows. This, then, was the real gale which the thunder-storm had been nearly all night bringing up. The first gale was but a summer breeze compared to it. The clouds lay like huge fantastic rolls of sheet lead upon the sky; in some quarters of the circle drooping to the water-line in patches and spaces ink-black. No fragment of blue heaven was visible; and yet it was lighter than it had been when I went below. The ensign, half-masted, roared over my head; the sea was momentarily growing heavier, and, as the ship pitched, she took the water in broad sheets over her forecastle. The terrible beating of the mizzen-topsail was making the mizzen-mast, from the mastcoat to the royal mast-head, jump like a piece of whalebone. Although deafened, bewildered, and soaked through with the screaming of the gale, the thunder of the torn canvas, and the spray which the wind tore out of the sea and hurtled through the air, I still preserved my senses; and perceiving that the mizzen-topmast would go if the sail were not got rid of, I crawled on my hands and knees to the foot of the mast, and let go the remaining sheet.