Hark!
A loud cry from the deck, followed by a sudden rush of feet, and the ship heeled over—over—yet over!
The women shrieked; the skylight turned black; plates, decanters, cutlery, glass, rolled from the table and fell with quick crashes. The decks fore and aft echoed with loud calls. You could hear the water gurgling in the lee port-holes. A keen blue gleam flashed upon the skylight; but if thunder followed the lightning it was inaudible amid the wild and continuous shrieking of the wind.
The skipper and Holdsworth scrambled to the companion-ladder and gained the deck. In a trice they saw what had happened. The ship, with all sails set, had been taken aback.
Away to windward, in the direction directly contrary to where the wind had been blowing before dinner, the sky was livid, flinging an early night upon the sea, and sending forth a tempest of wind that tore the water into shreds of foam. The whole force of the hurricane was upon the ship’s canvas, which lay backed against the masts, and the vessel lay on her beam-ends, her masts making an angle of forty degrees with the horizon.
The confusion was indescribable. Every halliard had been let go; but the yards were jammed by the sails, and would not descend. The clew-lines were manned, but the sheets would not stir an inch through the blocks. Nor was the worst of the squall, tempest, hurricane, whatever it might be, upon them yet; that livid pall of cloud which the lightning was seaming with zigzag fire was still to come, and with it the full fury its scowling aspect portended.
“My God!” thundered the skipper to the second mate, who stood white, cowed, and apparently helpless, “what have you brought us into?”
The wheel was jammed hard a-starboard, but the ship lay like a log, broadside on to the wind, her masts bowed almost on a level with the water.
“Haul! for your lives, men! haul!” shrieked the skipper frantically to the men, who appeared paralysed by the sudden catastrophe, and stood idly with the clew-lines and reef tackles passed along them.
Holdsworth, half-way up the weather-poop ladder, his head above the bulwarks, saw sooner than the captain what was about to happen.