Cover and Table of Contents created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
THE
WRECK OF THE "GROSVENOR:"
AN ACCOUNT OF
THE MUTINY OF THE CREW AND THE
LOSS OF THE SHIP
WHEN TRYING TO MAKE THE BERMUDAS.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1877.
(All rights reserved.)
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
Our next job was to man the port-bracesand bring the ship to a westerly course.But before we went to this work the boatswainand I stood for some minutes lookingat the appearance of the sky.
The range of cloud which had been buta low-lying and apparently a fugitive bankin the north-west at midnight, was now sofar advanced as to project nearly over ourheads, and what rendered its aspect moresinister was the steely colour of the sky,which it ruled with a line, here and there2rugged, but for the most part singularlyeven, right from the confines of the north-easternto the limits of the south-westernhorizon. All the central portion of thisvast surface of cloud was of a livid hue,which, by a deception of the eye, made itappear convex, and at frequent intervals asharp shower of arrowy lightning whizzedfrom that portion of it furthest away fromus, but as yet we could hear no thunder.
"When the rain before the wind, thenyour topsail halliards mind," chaunted theboatswain. "There's rather more nor aquarter o' an inch o' rain there, and there'ssomething worse nor rain astern of it."
The gloomiest feature of this approachingtempest, if such it were, was the slowness,at once mysterious and impressive, of itsapproach.
I was not, however, to be deceived bythis into supposing that, because it had3taken nearly all night to climb the horizon,there was no wind behind it. I had hadexperience of a storm of this kind, andremembered the observations of one of theofficers of the ship, when speaking of it."Those kind of storms," he said, "are notdriven by wind, but create it. They keep ahurricane locked up in their insides, andwander across the sea, on the look-out forships; when they come across somethingworth wrecking they let fly. Don't bedeceived by their slow pace, and imaginethem only thunderstorms. They'll burstlike an earthquake in a dead calm overyour head, and whenever you see onecoming snug your ship right away down tothe last reef in h