And there was no wind. No wind came. Nothing happened. The
Elsinore, naked-sparred, under only lower-topsails, with spanker and
crojack furled, was prepared for anything. Her lower-topsails hung
in limp emptiness from the yards, heavy with rain and flapping
soggily when she rolled. The cloud mass thinned, the day brightened,
the green blackness passed into gray twilight, the lightning eased,
the thunder moved along away from us, and there was no wind. In half
an hour the sun was shining, the thunder muttered intermittently
along the horizon, and the Elsinore still rolled in a hush of air.
"You can't tell, sir," Mr. Pike growled to me. "Thirty years ago I
was dismasted right here off the Plate in a clap of wind that come on
just as that come on."
It was the changing of the watches, and Mr. Mellaire, who had come on
the poop to relieve the mate, stood beside me.
"One of the nastiest pieces of water in the world," he concurred.
"Eighteen years ago the Plate gave it to me--lost half our sticks,
twenty hours on our beam-ends, cargo shifted, and foundered.
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