"'Twill nebber blow harder, Massa Tanly, till him blows himself right out," grinned Cuffy Snowball.
"A regular hurricane! the brig is almost under bare poles, and we sound the pumps every half-hour," added Hammer, who seemed indignant at the soundness of my past slumber.
On hearing all this, I leaped out, dressed myself, and hurried on deck.
A wild gale, in short, a tempest, was roaring through the rigging and straining the shrouds of the _Leda_; she lurched and pitched heavily, as she rushed through mountains of seething foam; for amid the black obscurity on all sides we could see its whiteness, and the snowy surf, which was torn by the wind from the wave-crests, and swept, like smoke, along the sea.
The brig was driving right before the wind, under a foresail, foretopsail, and fore and aft mainsail, all closely reefed. Everything was done that might render her snug. The deadlights had barely been shipped before she was struck by a wave which buried her in the black trough of the sea--tore her stern-boat from the iron davits, and swept it away like a leaf shred from a twig.
Hans and Paul Reeves were at the wheel. Hartly stood by them pale and excited, as I could perceive by the glimmering lights of the binnacle. All hands were on deck, and muffled in their glazed storm-jackets and dripping sou'-westers, so they seemed as drenched as if they had come up from the bottom of the sea.
"Take care of yourself, Jack--take care!" cried my friend; "every sea she ships sweeps something off the deck, and we have already lost one man from the fore-yardarm."
I grasped one of the mainshrouds, for the deck was so slippery, the gusts of wind so fierce, and the force of the seas, which broke ever and anon across the brig, so overwhelming, that I could never have kept afoot for a moment without some support.
On, on careered the _Leda_, through wind and waves--on through whitening foam and tossing wrack--on through drenching rain, darkness, and obscurity, with the storm roaring and whistling amid her straining spars and rigging, while she groaned in every timber, and seemed to quiver to her backbone, as the ponderous waves pursued and burst upon her.
Once or twice the gloom around us was varied by sheets of lightning which gleamed luridly at the far horizon; and then for an instant the black waves seemed to be washing _against_ the reddened sky. Elsewhere to the northward, when the black flying scud was torn asunder in heaven, we saw the long flickering rods of the "merry dancers" playing athwart the sky. Then the crape-like rent would close, and all again became pitchy darkness. The sea which tore away our quarter-boat had started the sternpost. Tom Hammer and his mates rushed to sound the pumps, and reported that "the water in the well had risen _four feet_!"