Explore "In the Misty Seas" by Harold Bindloss on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
At noon next day, Jordan once more brought the _Champlain's_ head to wind, and they put the third reef in her mainsail, while when she swept on again the sea grew steeper behind her, until the combers that raced after her apparently hung frothing above her helmsman's head. She would fling her stern up to meet them and while the man panted over his jerking wheel her bowsprit went down and down. Then she would leisurely lift her nose and surge forward lapped in seething foam, only to sink with a smooth, swift lurch again.
It was dryest aft, though there was water splashing everywhere, and the two lads hung about the mainmast where the little deckhouse partly sheltered them, watching the helmsman's grim face as he swung with his wheel. They knew, by this time, that, while it is a somewhat difficult affair to keep a hard-pressed vessel straight before the sea, unpleasant things are apt to happen to a fore-and-aft one if it is not done.