United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Had there been no other vessel in sight, this lightning would still have struck us; and this storm will not cease, even if we were to neglect what I consider a duty to our country." The master touched his hat, and made no answer. It was now about one o'clock, and the horizon to leeward, clearing up a little, showed the land upon the lee-beam. "Land ho!" cried one of the men.
At not more than a quarter of a mile's distance on our lee-beam, appeared a range of tremendous breakers, among which it seemed as if every sea would throw us. Their height, it may be guessed, was prodigious, when they could be clearly distinguished from the foaming waters of the surrounded ocean. It was a scene seldom to be witnessed, and never forgotten!
Taking a match from his waistcoat pocket and lighting a long clay pipe, he spoke: Along in the fifties I was cabin-boy on the whaling-ship Nimrod, Alarson Coffin, master. We were cruising on the coast of Brazil when, one day, the lookout, stationed at the masthead, reported a large school of sperm-whales off our lee-beam.
"Pass the slaver's lee-beam, sir," said Wilder to him, with a gesture of authority; and then the young Captain went himself to lean on the weather-rail, like every other idler on board, to examine the object they were so fast approaching.
"Morton, the land is drawing abeam," exclaimed Claymore suddenly; "the ship will be saved. I did not think so at one time, though." He was right: gradually it seemed to rise up more broad on the lee-beam; but as the ship surged onward amid wildly-leaping waves, the water, lashed into masses of foam, was seen over the lee-quarter leaping over the cliff from which she had so narrowly escaped.
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming. "There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!" "Where-away?" "On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!" Instantly all was commotion.
At half after one in the morning the man at the helm saw something under the lee-beam that the sea washed against, and he immediately called to me that there was a grampus, and desired me to look at it. Accordingly I stood up and observed it for some time; but, when I saw the sea wash up against it again and again, I said it was not a fish but a rock.
During these repeated efforts to get the trysail up, which necessarily occupied much time, the cutter had drifted some way to leeward; and, at last, the man keeping watch on the bow, exclaimed, "Breakers! Sir, breakers!" A dozen of us vociferated at the same moment, "Where?" "There they are!" shouted the man; "close on the lee-beam!"
At not more than a quarter of a mile's distance on our lee-beam, appeared a range of tremendous breakers, amongst which it seemed as if every sea would throw us. Their height, it may be guessed, was prodigious, when they could be clearly distinguished from the foaming waters of the surrounded ocean. It was a scene seldom to be witnessed, and never forgotten!
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming. "There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!" "Where-away?" "On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!" Instantly all was commotion.
Word Of The Day