Having no whale to hamper our movements, besides being well to
windward of them all, we were perfectly comfortable as long as we
kept to seaward of a certain line and the gale was not too
fierce, so for the present all our attention was concentrated
upon the labouring ships to leeward. The intervention of the
land to windward kept the sea from rising to the awful height it
attains under the pressure of a westerly, or a south-westerly
gale, when, gathering momentum over an area extending right round
the globe, it hurls itself upon those rugged shores. Still, it
was bad enough. The fact of the gale striking across the regular
set of the swell and current had the effect of making the sea
irregular, short, and broken, which state of things is considered
worse, as far as handling the ship goes, than a much heavier,
longer, but more regular succession of waves.
As the devoted craft drifted helplessly down upon that frowning
barrier, our excitement grew intense. Their inability to do
anything but drift was only too well known by experience to every
one of us, nor would it be possible for them to escape at all if
they persisted in holding on much longer. And it was easy to see
why they did so.
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