The Marie fled faster and faster before the wind; and time fled also—­before some invisible and mysterious power.  The gale, the sea, the Marie, and the clouds were all lashed into one great madness of hasty flight towards the same point.  The fastest of all was the wind; then the huge seething billows, heavier and slower, toiling after; and, lastly, the smack, dragged into the general whirl.  The waves tracked her down with their white crests, tumbling onward in continual motion, and she—­though always being caught up to and outrun—­still managed to elude them by means of the eddying waters she spurned in her wake, upon which they vented their fury.  In this similitude of flight the sensation particularly experienced was of buoyancy, the delight of being carried along without effort or trouble, in a springy sort of way.  The Marie mounted over the waves without any shaking, as if the wind had lifted her clean up; and her subsequent descent was a slide.  She almost slid backward, though, at times, the mountains lowering before her as if continuing to run, and then she suddenly found herself dropped into one of the measureless hollows that evaded her also; without injury she sounded its horrible depths, amid a loud splashing of water, which did not even sprinkle her decks, but was blown on and on like everything else, evaporating in finer and finer spray until it was thinned away to nothing.  In the trough it was darker, and when each wave had passed the men looked behind them to see if the next to appear were higher; it came upon them with furious contortions, and curling crests, over its transparent emerald body, seeming to shriek:  “Only let me catch you, and I’ll swallow you whole!”

But this never came to pass, for, as a feather, the billows softly bore them up and then down so gently; they felt it pass under them, with all its boiling surf and thunderous roar.  And so on continually, but the sea getting heavier and heavier.  One after another rushed the waves, more and more gigantic, like a long chain of mountains, with yawning valleys.  And the madness of all this movement, under the ever-darkening sky, accelerated the height of the intolerable clamour.

Yann and Sylvestre stood at the helm, still singing, “Jean Francois de Nantes”; intoxicated with the quiver of speed, they sang out loudly, laughing at their inability to hear themselves in this prodigious wrath of the wind.

“I say, lads, does it smell musty up here too?” called out Guermeur to them, passing his bearded face up through the half-open hatchway, like Jack-in-the-box.

Oh, no! it certainly did not smell musty on deck.  They were not at all frightened, being quite conscious of what men can cope with, having faith in the strength of their barkey and their arms.  And they furthermore relied upon the protection of that china Virgin, which had voyaged forty years to Iceland, and so often had danced the dance of this day, smiling perpetually between her branches of artificial flowers.