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Updated: June 26, 2025
Then it would drop once more; and nothing would be heard but the heavy flap of the canvas, the creak of the spars, the swish of the water as it lapped in over our bulwarks the craft rolling gunwale-under and a low weird moaning of pent-up wind, which teemed to be imprisoned in a heavy cloud-bank rapidly piling itself up on the north-western horizon.
All was still, and nothing moved, save only the great cloud which rolled up and onward, with fold on fold from the black horizon. To the west was the light summer sky, to the east this brooding cloud-bank, creeping ever slowly across, until the last thin blue gleam faded away and the whole vast sweep of the heavens was one great leaden arch. Then the rain began to fall.
From a distance to the lay observer this mass would have looked like an ordinary cloud-bank, but the experienced eyes of a fisherman would have discerned its ghastly gray hue and its flat contour.
Gazing at this cloud-bank for a few minutes, the captain turned and ordered the top-sails to be close-reefed, and most of the other sails either furled or reduced to their smallest size. He was in good time, and the vessel was ready for the gale, when it rushed down on them hissing like a storm-fiend.
It was great to be out there on a lonely sea with that splendid fish. I was tiring, but did not fail to see the shimmering beauty of the sea, the playing of albacore near at hand, the flight of frightened flying-fish, the swooping down of gulls, the dim shapes of boats far off, and away above the cloud-bank of fog the mountains of California.
A few minutes later the tutor was riding smartly to Yeld. During the half-hour occupied by that journey the signs of the approaching storm became manifest. The blue of the sky took a leaden hue, and out at sea an ominous cloud-bank lifted its head on the horizon, while the sultry air seemed to breathe hot on the rider's cheek. He pulled up short at Dr Brandram's door.
Perhaps the cloud-bank recalled to him the waterspout in which the "Albatross" had so nearly been destroyed, or the mighty cyclone from which he had escaped only as if by a miracle above the Antarctic Sea. It is true that the forces of Nature which had been too strong for the "Albatross," might easily be evaded by this lighter and more versatile machine.
In the control room, Bors watched out of a direct-vision port, giving occasional glances to the screens. There were flecks of light from innumerable stars. Then the shining cloud-bank of the gas-giant planet went black. Screens showed all of the fleet each blip with a nimbus about it which identified it as a friend, not a foe. There was the blip of the leading ship, the "point" of the formation.
She skimmed like a swallow down wind for eight or ten miles until I turned her nose up a little and she began to climb in a great spiral for the cloud-bank above me. It's all-important to rise slowly and adapt yourself to the pressure as you go. "It was a close, warm day for an English September, and there was the hush and heaviness of impending rain.
Part of the crew were already on the main-yard, and the remainder, having completed the reefing of the fore-topsail, had descended from aloft forward and were on their way up the main-rigging to assist in the stowing of the main-sail, when a heavy black, threatening-looking cloud-bank, which lay stretched along the western horizon, was seen to suddenly burst open, revealing a broad copper-tinted rent, which widened with alarming rapidity.
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