two o'clock in the afternoon
The _ Laughing Mary _ was a light ship , as sailors term a vessel that stands high upon the water , having discharged her cargo at Callao , from which port we were proceeding in ballast to Cape Town , South Africa , there to call for orders . Our run to within a few parallels of the latitude of the Horn had been extremely pleasant ; the proverbial mildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the mellow sweetness of the wind and in the gentle undulations of the silver-laced swell ; but scarce had we passed the height of forty-nine degrees when the weather grew sullen and dark , a heavy bank of clouds of a livid hue rose in the north-east , and the wind came and went in small guns , the gusts venting themselves in dreary moans , insomuch that our oldest hands confessed they had never heard blasts more portentous . The gale came on with some lightning and several claps of thunder and heavy rain . Though it was but two o'clock in the afternoon , the air was so dusky that the men had to feel for the ropes ; and when the first of the tempest stormed down upon us the appearance of the sea was uncommonly terrible , being swept and mangled into boiling froth in the north-east quarter , whilst all about us and in the south-west it lay in a sort of swollen huddle of shadows , glooming into the darkness of the sky without offering the smallest glimpse of the horizon . In a few minutes the hurricane struck us . We had bared the brig down to the close-reefed main-topsail ; yet , though we were dead before the outfly , its first blow rent the fragment of sail as if it were formed of smoke , and in an instant it disappeared , flashing over the bows like a scattering of torn paper , leaving nothing but the bolt-ropes behind . The bursting of the topsail was like the explosion of a large cannon .