It would not be looked in the face; it blinded the eyes that strove to search it; it seemed to flap and beat them with harsh, churlish wings; it was as full of insult as the billows.  Its cry was not multitudinous like that of the sea, but one and incessant and invariable, a long scream that almost hissed.  On reaching the wreck, however, this shriek became hoarse with rage, and howled as it shook the rigging.  It used the shrouds and stays of the still upright mainmast as an aeolian harp from which to draw horrible music.  It made the tense ropes tremble and thrill, and tortured the spars until they wailed a death-song.  Its force as felt by the shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it were a sea, and bruised them against the shrouds and bulwarks; it asserted its mastery over them with the long-drawn cruelty of a tiger.

Just around the wreck the tumult of both wind and sea was of course more horrible than anywhere else.  These enemies were infuriated by the sluggishness of the disabled hulk; they treated it as Indians treat a captive who cannot keep up with their march; they belabored it with blows and insulted it with howls.  The brig, constantly tossed and dropped and shoved, was never still for an instant.  It rolled heavily and somewhat slowly, but with perpetual jerks and jars, shuddering at every concussion.  Its only regularity of movement lay in this, that the force of the wind and direction of the waves kept it larboard side on, drifting steadily toward the land.

One moment it was on a lofty crest, seeming as if it would be hurled into air.  The next it was rolling in the trough of the sea, between a wave which hoarsely threatened to engulf it, and another which rushed seething and hissing from beneath the keel.  The deck stood mostly at a steep angle, the weather bulwarks being at a considerable elevation, and the lee ones dipping the surges.  Against this helpless and partially water-logged mass the combers rushed incessantly, hiding it every few seconds with sheets of spray, and often sweeping it with deluges.  Around the stern and bow the rush of bubbling, roaring whirls was uninterrupted.

The motion was sickly and dismaying, like the throes of one who is dying.  It could not be trusted; it dropped away under the feet traitorously; then, by an insolent surprise, it violently stopped or lifted.  It was made the more uncertain and distressing by the swaying of the water which had entered the hull.  Sometimes, too, the under boiling of a crushed billow caused a great lurch to windward; and after each of these struggles came a reel to leeward which threatened to turn the wreck bottom up; the breakers meantime leaping aboard with loud stampings as if resolved to beat through the deck.