Beadle's Dime Novels No. 94: The Mad Skipper — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

blow ! halliclujah! blow gale of wind, for dat will be our sal- vation !” And at frequent intervals during the day, Moonshine would go to the weather-rail, and peer eagerly to windward, watch- ing in vain for the signs of the coveted gale. On the next day, and the next, and soon for a Week, his watch was continued with the same result ; but on the eighth day, jist after six bells in the afternoon, a sudden squall _ pounced upon the ship, throwing her upon her beam ends, tearing her lighter canvas into shreds, and driving her through the roaring, seething waters with the speed of a thunderbolt. The three topsails, breaking loose from their sheets, “slatted ” wildly about, with a noise like the discharge of a platoon of musketry, while the tall masts, Snapping and quivering, seemed on the point of going by the board. Mingling with the roar of the gale in the rigging, and the hissing and booming of the vast ocean, a strange humming noise was heard, as if invisible swarms of locusts were passing Overhead. There was not a cloud in the sky, but a dim revolving pillar of haze hung over the sun like a vail, and ‘gave to it the aspect of a great ball of red-hot iron suspended aloft. Upon this lurid ball, the wild eyes of the Kanaka mate were turned with foreboding gleam a8 he shrieked forth his ordevs to all hands who had been summoned to take in sail. He had noticed this appearance of the sun but once before during his thirty years’ experience at sea; and that was when, cling- ing to the bottom of a capsized schooner off the Bahamas, he heard the despairing shrieks of his shipmates as they were tossed past him like chips of wood, with the torn spray flying from the storm-lashed waves. Now, as then, clouds of foam- flakes were whirled through the air like drifting snow. With these the shivering topsails were ‘soon drenched ; while to lee- ward the fore and main yard-arms were half buried amid the boiling waters in which the bursting canvas trailed, with the sheets whipping and writhing madly, like infuriated serpents eager to escape from bondage. Suddenly a crash was heard, as the three stripped studding- sail booms, simultaneously snapping in twain, fell from aloft, striking the deck before they went. down into the roaring vortex beyond the submerged bulwarks. connicloooks.com