Top-gallant sails, topsail, foresail and mainsail were soon clewed up, and the seamen's forms were distinctly seen running up through the gloom.
Too late! While the poor fellows were yet upon the yards, the storm, with the din of a thousand furies, struck the devoted ship.
At first nothing could be seen or heard, save the rush and the roar of the tempest.
The spray shrouded the ship as in a white cloud, flying all round her, blinding and bewildering the men, while the roar of the sea, the creaking, snapping and straining of yards and masts, the creaking of the timbers, the cannon-like report of the sails, slatting all over the vessel, with the whipping about of ropes, tacks and sheets, created a din such as only the sailor, caught unawares in a storm, can realize.
Vainly Brand, claining to a rope near the mizzenmast, endeavored to make himself heard; his voice was as a mere whisper in contrast with the shrieking and howling of the storm.
Meanwhile far down, with her rail buried, the ship tore away through the mad waters, swift as a thunderbolt, pitching meanwhile with a violence which threw several men off the yard into the white and black mist of spray and storm, bubbling, boiling and rolling beneath.
Harry Glenville had sprung aloft to cheer and encourage the men.
Vainly endeavoring to make himself heard, he was suddenly thrown from his position, and must have gone overboard but for his catching the backstay and by this reaching the deck.
No need now of men to pull the sails. With a sharp tearing sound, like the blasts from a thousand bass trumpets, every strip of canvass aboard the vessel was torn to shreds and carried far off into the rack and scud.