Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/24

 18 forced by the wet and the chillness of the atmosphere to herd together below deck.

Meantime, what between the crowded state of the cabins, the violence of the storm, the shocks received from the strife of waters in which we were involved, the fears and terrors of some, the horrid and blasphemous language uttered by others of the desperadoes about us, the dirt and impurity surrounding us, and the quarrelling and caballing of the crew, our position was truly unenviable.

Morning brought no cessation of the tempest. The wind continued to blow with terrific violence, and daylight found us riding and rocking among a tumult of billows, whitened by the driving surf, and enveloped by a gray misty cloud of agitated vapour. The pumps were sounded every half hour. The Halcyon was, however sound, and the captain's arrangements well and knowingly made; and there we rode, while one immense billow after another swelled up like a huge monster out of the mist to windward, advanced topling towards us, with its broad-spread moving slopes marbled by the bands of creamy foam, and after a moment of seeming hesitation whether it should go over or under us, was seen vanishing to leeward.

The history of hours thus spent must be passed over. This first day the Halcyon's stomach seemed to be annihilated. Nobody cared for sustenance, and cooking was out of the question. Some hope had been entertained that the storm might lull at sunset, the same hour at which it had arisen; but the evening apparently darkened over us more gloomily than before, and all the livelong night the wild wind and wild waves continued to struggle on the agitated bosom of the gulf. Our cabin was a Pandemonium.

Towards noon the second day the wind began to abate, the vapour to disperse, and the clouds to grow more transparent. An imperfect observation taken at twelve o'clock showed us that we had been driven about one hundred and fifty miles to the southeast of Tampico.