Now, too, there came, at irregular but quickly recurring intervals, savage gusts of wind that smote the ship as though she had been but a child's toy, heeling her down until her lee rail was awash, and holding her thus for two or three minutes at a time, then easing up for a short space, the "easing up" intervals, however, steadily growing more abbreviated, while the gusts that invariably followed them rapidly grew in intensity and fury, until after the passage of one that had pinned us down for three or four minutes, with our lee sheer-poles buried in the smother, I thought that the time had arrived to heave-to, and gave the order to do so.
