But anon a sudden
and appalling change came over the sea and the sky, that made the stoutest
amongst us quail and draw his breath thick. The firmament darkened--the
horizon seeme to contract--the sea became black as ink--the wind fell to a
dead calm--the teeming clouds descended and filled the murky arch of
heaven with their whirling masses, until they appeared to touch our
mast--heads, but there was neither lightning nor rain, not one glancing
flash, not one refreshing drop--the windows of the sky had been sealed up
by Him who had said to the storm, "Peace, be still."
During this deathlike pause, infinitely more awful than the heaviest gale,
every sound on board, the voices of the men, even the creaking of the
bulkheads, was heard with startling distinctness; and the water--logged
brig, having no wind to steady her, laboured so heavily in the trough of
the sea, that we expected her masts to go overboard every moment.
"Do you see and hear that, sir?" said Lieutenant Treenail to the Captain.
We all looked eagerly forth in the direction indicated. There was a white
line in fearful contrast with the clouds and the rest of the ocean,
gleaming on the extreme verge of the horizon--it grew broader--a low
increasing growl was heard--a thick blinding mist came driving up a--stern
of us, whose small drops pierced into the skin like sharp hail.
"Is it rain?"
"No, no--salt, salt."
And now the fierce Spirit of the Hurricane himself, the sea Azrael, in
storm and in darkness, came thundering on with stunning violence, tearing
off the snowy scalps of the tortured billows, and with tremendous and
sheer force, crushing down beneath his chariot wheels their mountainous
and howling ridges into one level plain of foaming water.
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