My senses heard "_Spray_ ahoy!" shouted in warning.

I sprang to the deck, wondering who could be there that knew the _Spray_ so well as to call out her name passing in the dark; for it was now the blackest of nights all around, except away in the southwest, where the old familiar white arch, the terror of Cape Horn, rapidly pushed up by a southwest gale.

I had only a moment to douse sail and lash all solid when it struck like a shot from a cannon, and for the first half-hour it was something to be remembered by way of a gale.

For thirty hours it kept on blowing hard.

The sloop could carry no more than a three-reefed mainsail and forestaysail; with these she held on stoutly and was not blown out of the strait.