The next moment he had slid down the backstay
and stood on deck, with a grin, a nod, and a gesture of
the finger that said "yes"; the next again, and he was
back sweating and squirming at the wheel, his tired
face streaming and smiling, and his hair and the rags
and corners of his clothes lashing round him in the
wind.
Nares went below, fetched up his binocular, and fell
into a silent perusal of the sea-line: I also, with my
unaided eyesight. Little by little, in that white
waste of water, I began to make out a quarter where the
whiteness appeared more condensed: the sky above was
whitish likewise, and misty like a squall; and little
by little there thrilled upon my ears a note deeper and
more terrible than the yelling of the gale--the long
thundering roll of breakers. Nares wiped his night-
glass on his sleeve and passed it to me, motioning, as
he did so, with his hand. An endless wilderness of
raging billows came and went and danced in the circle
of the glass; now and then a pale corner of sky, or the
strong line of the horizon rugged with the heads of
waves; and then of a sudden--come and gone ere I could
fix it, with a swallow's swiftness--one glimpse of what
we had come so far and paid so dear to see; the masts
and rigging of a brig pencilled on heaven, with an
ensign streaming at the main, and the ragged ribbons of
a topsail thrashing from the yard.
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