The ship immediately felt the effect of even this rag of canvass.  She drove ahead at a prodigious rate, running, I make no question, some eleven or twelve knots, under the united power collected by her hamper and this one fragment of a sail.  Her drift was unavoidably great, and I thought the current sucked her in towards the land; but, on the whole, she kept at about the same distance from the shore, foaming along it, much as we had seen the frigate do, the day before.  At the rate we were going, twelve or fifteen hours would carry us down to the passage between Holy Head and Ireland, when we should get more sea-room, on account of the land’s trending again to the westward.

Long, long hours did Marble and I watch the progress of our ship that day and the succeeding night, each of us taking our tricks at the wheel, and doing seaman’s duty, as well as that of mate and master.  All this time, the vessel was dashing furiously out towards the Atlantic, which she reached ere the morning of the succeeding day.  Just before he light returned we were whirled past a large ship that was lying-to, under a single storm-stay-sail, and which I recognised as the frigate that had taken a look at us at our anchorage.  The cutter was close at hand, and the fearful manner in which these two strong-handed vessels pitched and lurched, gave me some idea of what must be our situation, should we be compelled to luff to the wind.  I supposed they had done so, in order to keep as long as possible, on their cruising ground, near the chops of the Irish channel.

A wild scene lay around us, at the return of light.  The Atlantic resembled a chaos of waters, the portions of the rolling sheet that were not white with foam, looking green and angry.  The clouds hid the sun, and the gale seemed to be fast coming to its height.  At ten, we drove past an American, with nothing standing but his foremast.  Like us, he was running off, though we went three feet to his two.  Half an hour later, we had the awful sight before our eyes of witnessing the sudden disappearance of an English brig.  She was lying-to, directly on our course, and I was looking at her from the windlass, trying to form some opinion as to the expediency of our luffing-to, in order to hold our own.  Of a sudden, this brig gave a plunge, and she went down like a porpoise diving.  What caused this disaster I never knew; but, in five minutes we passed as near as possible over the spot, and not a trace of her was to be seen.  I could not discover so much as a handspike floating, though I looked with intense anxiety, in the hope of picking up some fellow-creature clinging to a spar.  As for stopping to examine, one who did not understand the language might as well hope to read the German character on a mile-stone, while flying past it in a rail-road car.