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Updated: May 23, 2025
"No time to lose," said Joe; and indeed there wasn't. The spoondrift began to fly so that you could not see the moon, and the wind was enough to choke you if you faced it. I have heard Joe say that small shot couldn't have hit you very much harder than the drift when you looked to windward.
I, therefore, no longer had any great fears about our present safety. A dreadful doom was, however, prepared for most on board. One night I was awoke by a terrific noise, and, rushing on deck, I found that one of those fierce hurricanes which occur at times in the tropics had just commenced. Amid a mass of spoondrift the schooner drove helplessly before it.
Hodgson ran back, swung himself on the horse, and rode away at a furious gallop, inclining his head against the gusts. And the schooner in a world of flying spray, white scud, and driving spoondrift, her cordage humming, her forefoot churning, the flag at her peak straining stiff in the gale, came up into the narrow passage of the Golden Gate, riding high upon the outgoing tide.
She doubted if the threat of bad weather would hold the Seamew in port. There was no rain just a wind which tore across the waste of waters within view of her station, scattering their crests in foam and spoondrift, and rolling them in huger and still huger breakers on the strand. It was a magnificent sight, but a terrifying one as well.
Looking out of the tent, we could scarcely bear the chilling blast, which drove the particles of snow like pins and needles into our faces much as spoondrift is driven from off the waves of the ocean. To proceed on our journey was impossible. We dared not even light a fire near the tent, lest it might be destroyed by the flames driven against it by any sudden change of wind.
As the gale increased, the tops of the waves were shorn off by the fierce blasts, clouding the whole atmosphere with frozen spray, or what the sailors call "spoondrift," rendering it impossible to see any object a few rods distant. Driving helplessly before the wind, yet in the direction of her place of destination, the schooner sped through the darkness.
As the gale increased, the tops of the waves were shorn off by the fierce blasts, clouding the whole atmosphere with frozen spray, or what the sailors call "spoondrift," rendering it impossible to see any object a few rods distant. Driving helplessly before the wind, yet in the direction of her place of destination, the schooner sped through the darkness.
Scarcely had he spoken, than a terrific roar was heard, and down came the gale upon us with unbridled fury, driving before it vast masses of spoondrift, and tearing up the water into huge waves, which every instant rose higher and higher.
A curtain of spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of those ashore the open sea and what swam on it. The old storekeeper reached the sands below the Shell Road. Scattered in groups along the strand were the people of all classes and degrees brought together by the word that a vessel was in peril.
The rain, too, beat down furiously, and the spoondrift in thick showers flew off the summits of the seas, shrouding the ship in a dense mist, through which no objects, had any been near, could have been discerned. At present, the chief fear was lest the ship should run foul of any other hove to, for none could cross her course under sail. On she flew.
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