For six days the Swan sailed westward before a gentle wind.

Then clouds were seen rising in the north, and spreading with great rapidity across the horizon.
"We are in for a tempest," Captain Reuben said.

"Never have I seen the clouds rising more rapidly.
"Get her sail off her, Standing, as quickly as possible." The crew fell to work, and in a very few minutes the Swan was stripped of the greater part of her canvas.

But quickly as the men worked, the storm came up more rapidly, and the crew had but half finished their work when, with a roar and turmoil that almost bewildered them, the gale struck the vessel.

Her head had been laid to the south, so that the wind should take her astern; and it was well that it was so, for had it struck her on the beam, she would assuredly have been capsized, even had not a rag of canvas been shown, for the wind would have caught her lofty forecastle and poop.