About one o'clock in the afternoon
If she did not walk on their surface like the petrels , she could like the eagles find calm and sunshine in the higher zones . They had now passed the forty-seventh parallel . The day was but little over seven hours long , and would become even less as they approached the Pole . About one o'clock in the afternoon the `` Albatross '' was floating along in a lower current than usual , about a hundred feet from the level of the sea . The air was calm , but in certain parts of the sky were thick black clouds , massed in mountains , on their upper surface , and ruled off below by a sharp horizontal line . From these clouds a few lengthy protuberances escaped , and their points as they fell seemed to draw up hills of foaming water to meet them . Suddenly the water shot up in the form of a gigantic hourglass , and the `` Albatross '' was enveloped in the eddy of an enormous waterspout , while twenty others , black as ink , raged around her .