'
"We were down in latitudes where the current sets southeasterly, and
this was helping us all the time. But on the sixth and seventh days,
although the wind held fair and light and steady, a considerable
swell had been following us, warning of trouble somewhere to
northward; and on the eighth night it overtook us.
"It was--not to speak irreverently--in itself ten times more trouble
than ten thousand Grimalsons could have raised; a tearing gale of
wind which, all of a sudden, converted the oily summits of the swell
into bursting white waves. I don't suppose the height from trough to
summit actually increased as it did to view, but in twenty minutes,
and with night shutting down the lid on us, each successive wave
astern seemed to grow taller by feet. The rain appeared to have no
effect in flattening their caps, though it came down with a weight
that knocked half the breath out of our bodies, and with a roar above
which it was hard to hear an order shouted. We could spy the other
boats' lanterns but at long intervals, partly because of this
down-pouring curtain and partly, I suppose, because when we topped up
over a crest they would nine times out of ten be hidden in a trough,
dipping or rising.
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