During the evening of the day on which the wind shifted round to the north-west, the sky somewhat cleared and the night was fine and starlight; but the gale seemed to blow with all the greater vehemence as the clouds dispersed. It increased to the strength of a hurricane towards one o’clock in the morning, when, the fore-topsail and mizzen staysail blowing away, the ship had to content herself with running under bare poles, careering through the water faster than ever. She had certainly never realised such speed since she had been launched.
I was awake when Captain Miles came down at this time to consult the barometer, and I could hear what he said to Jackson, who had accompanied him below for something or other, the two talking together just outside my bunk.
“I’m sure I can’t make it out at all,” the captain said in rather a hopeless way. “Here’s the glass keeping as high as possible, and yet the gale shows no token of lessening. What can it mean?”
“These cyclones are queer things, sir,” responded Jackson. “I was in two while in a China trader, and sha’n’t forget them in a hurry.”
“I could understand it,” continued Captain Miles as if reasoning with himself, “keeping on like this if we were in the Gulf of Mexico now, for it looks like what they call a norther there; but I’ve never heard of one of those winds being met in the Atlantic.”
“It’s something out of the common, sir,” observed Jackson. “It’s a cyclone, or hurricane, if I ever was in one, and I don’t see as how we can do better than we are doing, sir.”
“Well, we simply can’t,” said the captain. “We are running before it as hard as we can with only our bare sticks showing, for the vessel won’t stand a rag of sail; so, it is utterly impossible to lay to and brave it out.”
“Quite so, sir,” responded the other. “All we can do is to carry on and trust to running out of it into calm weather. We ought to have made a long stretch to the southwards by now.”
“So we have, Jackson,” said Captain Miles. “We’re now, I fancy, pretty well back where we lay so long in the calm, although perhaps a trifle more to the eastwards; but, if we run on much further, I’m sure I don’t know where we’ll bring up!”
There the conversation ended and I went off to sleep soon afterwards, although the creaking of the timbers and roar of the sea sounded terrific, making noise enough to drown the sound of everything else. I couldn’t hear a footstep on the deck above me—all was hushed but the terrible turmoil of the elements.