About noon
He was pretty wet , inasmuch as the spray showered incessantly athwart ships , while every few minutes heavy seas came over the quarter bulwarks , slamming upon the deck like the tail of a shark in his agonies . During the morning several great combers had surmounted the port bow and rushed aft , carrying along everything loose or that could be loosened , and banging against the companion door with the force of a runaway horse . And these deluges grew more frequent , for the gale was steadily increasing in violence , howling and shrieking out of the gilded eastern horizon as if Lucifer and his angels had been hurled anew from heaven . About noon the close-reefed foretopsail burst open from earing to earing , and then ripped up to the yard , the corners stretching out before the wind and cracking like musket shots . To set it again was impossible ; the orders came , `` Down yard -- haul out reef tackle ; '' then half a dozen men laid out on the spar and began furling . Scarcely was this terrible job well under way when a whack of the slatting sail struck a Kanaka boy from his hold , and he was carried to leeward by the gale as if he had been a bag of old clothes , dropping forty feet from the side into the face of a monstrous billow . He swam for a moment , but the next wave combed over him and he disappeared .