Masters of the Wheat-Lands by Harold Bindloss

Before they hove to the _Selache_, daylight broke on a frothing sea, across which scudded wisps of smoke-adrift and thin showers of snow. With two little wet rags of canvas set the schooner lay almost head on to the big combers. Having little way upon her, she lurched over instead of ramming the waves, and though now and then one curled on board across her rail it was not often that there was much heavy water upon her slanted deck.

All around the narrow circle a leaden sky met the sea. It was bitterly cold, and the spray stung the skin like half-spent pellets from a gun. There was only one man, in turn, exposed to the weather, and he had little to do but brace himself against the savage buffeting of the wind as he clutched the wheel. The _Selache_, for the most part, steered herself, lifting buoyantly while the froth came sluicing aft from her tilted bows, falling off a little with a vicious leeward roll when a comber bigger than usual smote her to weather, and coming up again streaming to meet the next. Sometimes she forged ahead in what is called at sea, by courtesy, a "smooth," and all the time shroud and stay to weather gave out tumultuous harmonies, and the slack of every rope to leeward blew out in unyielding curves.