My great-uncle took snuff, calmly deliberate.
"Curb your fears, Martin," he answered. "I have weathered a lifetime of gales in the Royal James. Take in sail, of course; but if we sacrificed a mast needlessly 'twould cripple us for weeks. Where away is this wind?"
Martin waved an arm across the northwestern arc of the horizon.
"Look for yourself, cap'n. I be an old man, and I never seed the like."
Murray's reply was to swarm up the mizzen rigging with the uncanny agility of which he was capable, and I climbed after him. We were some fifty feet above the deck when we saw clearly with the naked eye a vast purple canopy arching forward across the northern sky, a thing of splendidly colorful intensity, savagely beautiful. Jagged streaks of lightning flashed forth from its mirky depths. A tattered fringe of storm-clouds whipped out ahead of it like the tentacles of some monstrous sea-creature. And it advanced at an incredible speed, covering miles of sea and sky in the few moments that we watched it.
My great-uncle's jaw squared grimly.
"'Tis too late to sacrifice the mizzen," he said. "We'd not have time to clear the wreckage."
His commands rang through the ship.
"Aloft, topmen! Strip her to a storm-jib! Hola, Coupeau! Double-lash your chase-guns and be certain the broadside batteries are secured and the ports closed. Batten all hatches, Saunders!"
'Twas as much as I could do to keep pace with him as he descended to the poop.