about one o'clock
She lay down to it until her bulwarks were under water , and the sheer-poles in the rigging above the rail hidden . In this posture she hung so long that Captain Rosy , the master , bawled to me to tell the carpenter to stand by to cut away the topmast rigging . But the _ Laughing Mary _ , as the brig was called , was a buoyant ship and lightly sparred , and presently bringing the sea on the bow , through our seizing a small tarpaulin in the weather main shrouds , she erected her masts afresh , like some sentient creature pricking its ears for the affray , and with that showed herself game and made indifferently good weather of it . But though the first rage of the storm was terrible enough , its fierceness did not come to its height till about one o'clock in the middle watch . Long before then the sea had grown mountainous , and the dance of our eggshell of a brig upon it was sickening and affrighting . The heads of the Andean peaks of black water looked tall enough to brush the lowering soot of the heavens with the blue and yellow phosphoric fires which sparkled ghastly amid the bursting froth . Bodies of foam flew like the flashings of pale sheet-lightning through our rigging and over us , and a dreadful roaring of mighty surges in mad career , and battling as they ran , rose out of the sea to deepen yet the thunderous bellowing of the hurricane on high .