noon
We had to beat up for three days before we could weather the east end of Jamaica , and tearing work we had of it . I had seen bad weather and heavy seas in several quarters of the globe -- I had tumbled about under a close-reefed main-topsail and reefed foresail , on the long seas in the Bay of Biscay -- I had been kicked about in a seventy-four , off the Cape of Good Hope , as if she had been a cork -- I had been hove hither and thither , by the short jumble of the North Sea , about Heligoland , and the shoals lying off the mouth of the Elbe , when every thing over head was black as thunder , and all beneath as white as snow -- I had enjoyed the luxury of being tom in pieces by a northwester , which compelled us to lie-to for ten days at a stretch , under storm stay-sails , off the coast of Yankeeland , with a clear , deep , cold , blue sky above us , without a cloud , where the sun shone brightly the whole time by day , and a glorious harvest moon by night , as if they were smiling in derision upon our riven and strained ship , as she reeled to and fro like a wounded Titan ; at one time buried in the trough of the sea , at another cast upwards towards the heavens by the throes of the tormented waters , from the troubled bosom of the bounding and roaring ocean , amidst hundreds of miniature rainbows , -LRB- ay , rainbows by night as well as by day , -RRB- in a hissing storm of white , foaming , seething spray , torn from the curling and rolling bright green crests of the mountainous billows . And I have had more than one narrow squeak for it in the neighbourhood of the `` still vexed Bermoothes , '' besides various other small affairs , written in this Boke ; but the devil such another tumblefication had I ever experienced-not as to danger , for there was none except to our spars and rigging , but as to discomfort as I did in that short , cross , splashing , and boiling sea , off Morant Point . By noon , however , on the second day , having had a slant from the land wind in the night previous , we got well to windward of the long sandy spit that forms the east end of the island , and were in the act of getting a small pull of the weather braces , before edging away for St Jago , when the wind fell suddenly , and in half an hour it was stark calm -- ` una furiosa calma , ' as the Spanish sailors quaintly enough call it . We got rolling tackles up , and the topgallant-masts down , and studding sails out of the tops , and lessened the lumber and weight aloft in every way we could think of , but , nevertheless , we continued to roll gunwale under , dipping the main-yardarm into the water every now and then , and setting every thing adrift , below and on deck , that was not bolted down , or otherwise well secured . When I went down to dinner , the scene was extremely good . Old Yerk , the first lieutenant , was in the chair -- one of the boys was jammed at his side , with his claws fastened round the foot of the table , holding a tureen of boiling pease-soup , with lumps of pork swimming in it , which the aforesaid Yerk was baling forth with great assiduity to his messmates .