"Full and by," was his reiterated command. "Keep her a good full--a
rap-full; but don't let her fall away. Hold her to it, and drive
her."
He took no notice whatever of me, although I, on my way to the lee of
the chart-house, stood at his shoulder a full minute, offering him a
chance to speak. He knew I was there, for his big shoulder brushed
my arm as he swayed and turned to warn the helmsmen in the one breath
to hold her up to it but to keep her full. He had neither time nor
courtesy for a passenger in such a moment.
Sheltering by the chart-house, I saw the moon appear. It grew
brighter and brighter, and I saw the land, dead to leeward of us, not
three hundred yards away. It was a cruel sight--black rock and
bitter snow, with cliffs so perpendicular that the Elsinore could
have laid alongside of them in deep water, with great gashes and
fissures, and with great surges thundering and spouting along all the
length of it.
Our predicament was now clear to me. We had to weather the bight of
land and islands into which we had drifted, and sea and wind worked
directly on shore.
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