So soon as we got from under the lee of the land, the breeze
struck us, and it came on to blow like thunder, so that we were all soon
reduced to our storm staysails; and there we were, transports, merchantmen,
and men--of--war, rising on the mountainous billows one moment, and the
next losing sight of every thing but the water and sky in the deep trough
of the sea, while the seething foam was blown over us in showers from the
curling manes of the roaring waves. But overhead, all this while, it was
as clear as a lovely winter moon could make it, and the stars shone
brightly in the deep blue sky; there was not even a thin fleecy shred of
cloud racking across the moon's disk. Oh, the glories of a northwester!
But the devil seize such glory! Glory, indeed! with a fleet of transports,
and a regiment of soldiers on board! Glory! why, I daresay five hundred
rank and file, at the fewest, were all cascading at one and the same
moment, a thousand poor fellows turned outside in, like so many pairs of
old stockings. Any glory in that? But to proceed.
Next morning the gale still continued, and when the day broke, there was
the frigate standing across our bows, rolling and pitching, as she tore her
way through the boiling sea, under a close--reefed main--topsail and reefed
foresail, with topgallant--yards and royal masts, and every thing that
could be struck with safety in war time, down on deck. There she lay with
her clear black bends, and bright white streaks and long tier of cannon on
the maindeck, and the carronades on the quarterdeck and forecastle grinning
through the ports in the black bulwarks, while the white hammocks,
carefully covered by the hammock--cloths, crowned the defences of the
gallant frigate fore and aft, as she delved through the green surge,--one
minute rolling and rising on the curling white crest of a mountainous sea,
amidst a hissing snowstorm of spray, with her bright copper glancing from
stem to stem, and her scanty white canvass swelling aloft, and twenty feet
of her keel forward occasionally hove into the air clean out of the water,
as if she had been a sea--bird rushing to take wing,--and the next, sinking
entirely out of sight, hull, masts, and rigging, behind an intervening sea,
that rose in hoarse thunder between us, threatening to overwhelm both us
and her.
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