Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/496

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schooner staggered through it was little short of a miracle. Ulysses could hardly have had a worse dusting, when his stupid crew let loose all the winds which Æolus had so kindly bagged up for him. Every stitch of canvas was ripped up but the little rag of a top-sail, under which we scudded before the gale through four days, running down in one four-and-twenty hours two hundred and twenty miles of latitude. The seas which came tumbling after us, each one seemingly determined to roll over the poop, were perfectly frightful; especially when one looked aloft and saw the little patch of canvas threatening every moment to give way, and heard the waters gurgling under the counter as the stern went down and the bows went up, while a very Niagara was roaring and curveting after us, as if maddened with defeat, and with each new effort the more determined to catch the craft before she should mount the crest ahead. But she slipped from under every threatening danger as gracefully, if not as

"Swift, as an eagle cleaving the liquid air,"

and, leaving the parted billows foaming and roaring behind her, passed on triumphant and unharmed.

When off Labrador, the wind hauled suddenly to the westward, and we had to give up the chase, and get the schooner's head to it. McCormick had managed to patch up the foresail, and, getting a triangular piece of it rigged for a storm-sail, we proposed to heave her to. There did not appear to be much chance of a successful termination to this new venture, but it was clearly this or nothing. The sail was set and the determination come to just in time, for we shipped a terrible sea over the quarter, the schooner