All at once, at about eleven o'clock, the moon burst brightly
forth through a rift in the clouds, and the waves sparkled again
as if illumined by a submarine glimmer. I start up and look
around me. Is it merely imagination? or do I really see a black
speck floating on the dazzling whiteness of the waters, a speck
that cannot be a rock; because it rises and falls with the
heaving motion of the billows? But the moon once again becomes
overclouded; the sea, is darkened, and I return to my uneasy
couch close to the larboard shrouds.
CHAPTER XXVII.
DECEMBER 6th.--I must have fallen asleep for a few hours, when at
four o'clock in the morning, I was rudely aroused by the roaring
of the wind, and could distinguish Curtis's voice as he shouted
in the brief intervals between the heavy gusts.
I got up, and holding tightly to the purlin--for the waves made
the masts tremble with their violence--I tried to look around and
below me. The sea was literally raging beneath, and great masses
of livid-looking foam were dashing between the masts, which were
oscillating terrifically. It was still dark, and I could only
faintly distinguish two figures on the stern, whom, by the sound
of their voices, that I caught occasionally above the tumult, I
made out to be Curtis and the boatswain.
Just at that moment a sailor, who had mounted to the main-top to
do something to the rigging, passed close behind me.
"What's the matter?" I asked,
"The wind has changed," he answered, adding something which I
could not hear distinctly, but which sounded like "dead against
us.
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