She had certainly never realised such speed since she had been launched.
I was awake when Captain Miles came down at this time to consult the barometer, and I could hear what he said to Jackson, who had accompanied him below for something or other, the two talking together just outside my bunk.
"I'm sure I can't make it out at all," the captain said in rather a hopeless way.

"Here's the glass keeping as high as possible, and yet the gale shows no token of lessening.

What can it mean ?" "These cyclones are queer things, sir," responded Jackson.

"I was in two while in a China trader, and sha'n't forget them in a hurry." "I could understand it," continued Captain Miles as if reasoning with himself, "keeping on like this if we were in the Gulf of Mexico now, for it looks like what they call a norther there; but I've never heard of one of those winds being met in the Atlantic." "It's something out of the common, sir," observed Jackson.

"It's a cyclone, or hurricane, if I ever was in one, and I don't see as how we can do better than we are doing, sir." "Well, we simply can't," said the captain.