All this was true enough!  The cables had parted, and the ship’s head was falling off fast from the gale, like the steed that has slipped his bridle, before he commences his furious and headlong career.  I looked round for the negroes; but Neb was already at the wheel.  That noble fellow, true as steel, had perceived the accident as soon as any of us, and he sprang to the very part of the vessel where he was most needed.  He had a seaman’s faculties in perfection, though ratiocination was certainly not his forte.  A motion of my hand ordered him to put the helm hard up, and the answering sign let me know that I was obeyed.  We could do no more just then, but the result was awaited in awful expectation.

The Dawn’s bows fell off until the ship lay broadside to the gale, which made her reel until her lee lower yard-arms nearly dipped.  Then she overcame the cauldron of water that was boiling around her, and began to draw heavily ahead.  Three seas swept athwart her decks, before she minded her helm in the least, carrying with them every thing that was not most firmly lashed, or which had not animal life to direct its movements, away to leeward.  They swept off the hen-coops, and ripped four or five water-casks from their lashings, even, as if the latter had been pack-thread.  The camboose-house went also, at the last of these terrific seas; and nothing saved the camboose itself, but its great weight, added to the strength of its fastenings.  In a word, little was left, that could very well go, but the launch, the gripes of which fortunately held on.

By the time this desolation was completed, the ship began to fall off, and her movement through the water became very perceptible.  At first, she dashed in toward the land, running, I make no doubt, quite half a mile obliquely in that direction, ere she got fairly before the wind; a course which carried her nearly in a line with the coast.  Marble and myself now got aft without much trouble, and put the helm a little to starboard, with a view to edge off to the passage as far as possible.  The wind blew so nearly down channel, that there would have been no immediate danger, had we an offing; but the ship had not driven before the gale more than three or four hours, when we made land ahead; the coast trending in this part of the island nearly north and south.  Marble suggested the prudence of taking time by the forelock, and of getting the main-top-sail on the ship, to force her off the land, the coast in the neighbourhood of Dublin lying under our lee-bow.  We had taken the precaution to close-reef everything before it was furled, and I went aloft myself to lower this sail.  If I had formed a very respectful opinion of the power of the gale, while on deck, that opinion was materially heightened when I came to feel its gusts, on the main-top-sail-yard.  It was not an easy matter to hold on at all; and to work, required great readiness and strength.  Nevertheless, I got the sail loose, and then I went down and aided Marble and the cook to drag home the sheets.  Home, they could not be dragged by us, notwithstanding we got up a luff; but we made the sail stand reasonably well.