Explore "The Frozen Pirate" by W. Clark Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The _Laughing Mary_ was a light ship, as sailors term a vessel that / stands high upon the water, having discharged her cargo at Callao, from / which port we were proceeding in ballast to Cape Town, South Africa, / there to call for orders. Our run to within a few parallels of the / latitude of the Horn had been extremely pleasant; the proverbial / mildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the mellow sweetness of the wind / and in the gentle undulations of the silver-laced swell; but scarce had / we passed the height of forty-nine degrees when the weather grew sullen / and dark, a heavy bank of clouds of a livid hue rose in the north-east, / and the wind came and went in small guns, the gusts venting themselves / in dreary moans, insomuch that our oldest hands confessed they had never / heard blasts more portentous.
The gale came on with some lightning and several claps of thunder and / heavy rain. Though it was but two o'clock in the afternoon, the air was / so dusky that the men had to feel for the ropes; and when the first of / the tempest stormed down upon us the appearance of the sea was / uncommonly terrible, being swept and mangled into boiling froth in the / north-east quarter, whilst all about us and in the south-west it lay in / a sort of swollen huddle of shadows, glooming into the darkness of the / sky without offering the smallest glimpse of the horizon.