There was no
gale, no moving zephyrs, nothing but a vast quietude of air.
"What is it?" I gasped, out of equilibrium from the abrupt cessation
of wind.
"The shift," he said. "There she comes."
And it came, from the north-west, a blast of wind, a blow, an
atmospheric impact that bewildered and stunned and again made the
Elsinore harp protest. It forced me down on the rail. I was like a
windle-straw. As I faced this new abruptness of gale it drove the
air back into my lungs, so that I suffocated and turned my head aside
to breathe in the lee of the draught. The man at the wheel again
listened to the Gabriel voice; and Mr. Pike, on the deck below,
listened and repeated the will of the voice; and Captain West, in
slender and stately balance, leaned into the face of the wind and
slowly paced the deck.
It was magnificent. Now, and for the first time, I knew the sea, and
the men who overlord the sea. Captain West had vindicated himself,
exposited himself. At the height and crisis of storm he had taken
charge of the Elsinore, and Mr.
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