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It was just after the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of clouds; you could see showers away at sea, and the sea was green and foam-capped. There was the trying-out gear; there were the boats, the crow's nest, and all complete, and labelling her a whaler.

He worked himself round under the lee of the mainmast, and held on with both hands at the fife-rail, his breath blown down into his lungs by the wind. The squall was not one of those which come and go in a few moments; and, in a short time, the sea had been lashed into a boiling, roaring, foam-capped maelstrom. The Josephine rolled and pitched most fearfully.

At the beginning of the next week, invited by that thin glinting sunshine beneath which the sea still ran high, in long, hollow-backed waves, brokenly foam-capped and swirling Damaris came forth from her retreat, sufficiently convalescent to take up the ordinary routine of life again.

She was now in the trough between two seas, and as the one following her came sweeping up astern with towering foam-capped crest reared high in air, it became evident that, being pinned down as it were with so much water in the after part of her, she would not recover herself in time, and that the approaching sea would run right over her.

From where he stood it appeared to be growing in the midst of the sea, for huge breakers completely hid the coral embankment. This sentinel of the land had a weirdly impressive effect. It was the only fixed object in the waste of foam-capped waves.

Below them stretched the wide Firth of Clyde, turbulent, angry with foam-capped waves. Far across the water rose the giant mountains of Arran, with their tattered peaks frowning in dark-blue blackness against the leaden sky, and through a rent in the clouds a long beam of sunshine shot, slanting down for a moment upon the soft green hills of Bute.

It was at this time looking very black and wild to windward; the sky all along the south-western horizon being of a deep slaty, indigo hue, swept by swift- flying streamers of dirty, whitish-grey cloud; while the leaden-grey sea, scourged into a waste of steep, foam-capped ridges and deep, seething, wind-furrowed valleys, had already risen to such a height as to completely becalm our low canvas every time that the schooner settled down into the trough.

Then, their sight coming to them again, they followed Marshall up the poop ladder, and stood, staring out upon a night of blusterous wind and faintly phosphorescent, foam-capped sea; of flying clouds amid which the stars twinkled mistily and vanished, to re-appear presently with the tall spars and swelling canvas of the ship swaying dizzily and black among them; a night full of unaccustomed sounds of creaking and groaning timbers, of the splashing and roaring of water under the ship's bows, along her bends, and about her rudder; of strange sighings and moanings aloft; and of the low murmur of men's voices as the watch clustered under the shelter of the towering forecastle, discussing, mayhap, like their superiors aft, the prospects of the voyage.

The sea was running so high that, close to each other as we were, when the crest of a wave interposed between us and the City of Cawnpore the latter was hidden half-way to the height of her tops; and the headlong fury with which each wave came sweeping down upon us, foam-capped, and with arching crest, was alone enough to strike terror to the stoutest heart.

The sea now began to rise rapidly, and when day at length broke it revealed a dismal picture of dark tempestuous sky, leaden-grey ocean, its surface broken up into high, racing, foam-capped seas, and the little fleet of boats tossing wildly upon the angry surges, the launch leading, the pinnace next, and the others so far astern that it took Captain Staunton quite ten minutes to satisfy himself that they were all still in sight.