Two Or Three Long High Hills Of
Water Seemed To Fill Up The Whole Horizon, Themselves An Aggregate Of A
Countless Number Of Leaping, Foam-Capped Waves, Each Apparently Large
Enough To Overwhelm A Ship.
Huge green waves seemed to chase us, when,
just as they reached the stern, the ship would lift, and they would pass
under her.
She showed especial capabilities for rolling. She would roll
down on one side, the billows seeming ready to burst in foam over her,
while the opposite bulwark was fifteen or eighteen feet above the water,
displaying her bright green copper. The nights were more glorious than the
days, when the broad full moon would shed her light upon the water with a
brilliancy unknown in our foggy clime. It did not look like a wan flat
surface, placed flat upon a watery sky, but like a large radiant sphere
hanging in space. The view from the wheel-house was magnificent. The
towering waves which came up behind us heaped together by mighty winds,
looked like hills of green glass, and the phosphorescent light like fiery
lamps within - the moonlight glittered upon our broad foamy wake - our masts
and spars and rigging stood out in sharp relief against the sky, while for
once our canvas looked white. Far in the distance the sharp bow would
plunge down into the foam, and then our good ship, rising, would shake her
shiny sides, as if in joy at her own buoyancy. The busy hum of men marred
not the solitary sacredness of midnight on the Atlantic.
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