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CHAPTER XIII.
FACE TO FACE WITH NIGHT.
Again was the hooker running with the shadow into immeasurable darkness.
The Matutina, escaped from the Caskets, sank and rose from billow to
billow. A respite, but in chaos.
Spun round by the wind, tossed by all the thousand motions of the wave,
she reflected every mad oscillation of the sea. She scarcely pitched at
all--a terrible symptom of a ship's distress. Wrecks merely roll.
Pitching is a convulsion of the strife. The helm alone can turn a vessel
to the wind.
In storms, and more especially in the meteors of snow, sea and night
end by melting into amalgamation, resolving into nothing but a smoke.
Mists, whirlwinds, gales, motion in all directions, no basis, no
shelter, no stop. Constant recommencement, one gulf succeeding another.
No horizon visible; intense blackness for background. Through all these
the hooker drifted.
To have got free of the Caskets, to have eluded the rock, was a victory
for the shipwrecked men; but it was a victory which left them in stupor.
They had raised no cheer: at sea such an imprudence is not repeated
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