The _We're Here_ slid, as it were, into long, sunk avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and homelike if they would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy, and flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills, while the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes.
Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and the others would follow suit as at a signal, till Harvey's eyes swam with the vision of interlacing whites and grays.

Four or five Mother Carey's chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows.

A rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down 'wind and back again, and melted away.
"Seems to me I saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said Uncle Salters, pointing to the northeast.
"Can't be any of the fleet," said Disko, peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the foc'sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the troughs.

"Sea's oilin' over dretful fast.

Danny, don't you want to skip up a piece an' see how aour trawl-buoy lays ?" Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy), hitched himself around the reeling cross-trees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell.
"She's all right," he hailed.