We soon,
however, left these astern, having passed within about two miles of
them; and at sundown the horizon was clear in all directions.
Having a fine wind, we were soon up with and passed the latitude
of the Cape, and having stood far enough to the southward to give it a
wide berth, we began to stand to the eastward, with a good prospect of
being round and steering to the northward on the other side, in a very
few days.
But ill luck seemed to have lighted upon us. Not four hours had we
been standing on in this course, before it fell dead calm; and in half
an hour it clouded up; a few straggling blasts, with spits of snow and
sleet, came from the eastward; and in an hour more, we lay hove-to
under a close-reefed main topsail, drifting bodily off to leeward
before the fiercest storm that we had yet felt, blowing dead ahead,
from the eastward. It seemed as though the genius of the place had
been roused at finding that we had nearly slipped through his fingers,
and had come down upon us with tenfold fury. The sailors said that
every blast, as it shook the shrouds, and whistled through the
rigging, said to the old ship, "No, you don't!"- "No, you don't!"
For eight days we lay drifting about in this manner.
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