None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, except for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.

Many a man ought to have a bathtub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat navigation.

The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six inches of boat’s side which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Oh! That was a narrow clip." As he remarked it, he invariably gazed eastward over the broken sea.

The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the stern. It was a thin little oar, and it seemed often ready to snap.

The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and wondered why he was there.

The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring. When without warning the firm fails, the army loses, and the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her. Though he commanded for a day or a decade, this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces. Later a stump of a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves went low and lower and down. Thereafter there was something strange in his voice. Although steady, it was deep with mourning and of a quality beyond oration or tears.

     "Keep her a little more south, Billie," said he.
     "A little more south,'sir," said the oiler in the stern.

 A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking bronco and by the same token, a bronco is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared and plunged like an animal. As each wave came and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high. The manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing, and moreover at the top of them were ordinarily these problems in white water. The foam racing down from the summit of each wave required a new leap and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping a crest, she would slide and race and splash down a long incline. It would arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave, you discover that there is another behind. It is just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dinghy, one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in a dinghy. As each wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of the men in the boat. It was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean and the last effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of the waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests.

In the pale light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes  must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtlessly have been weirdly  picturesque. However, the men in the boat had no time to see it. If they had had leisure, there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the color of  the sea changed from slate to emerald-green, streaked with amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the breaking day was unknown to them.They were aware only of this effect upon the color of the  waves that rolled toward them.
 

                                                           Excerpt from A Letter from Joseph Conrad

To this writer of the sea, the sea was not an element.  It was a stage, where displayed an exhibition of valor and of such achievement as the world had never seen before.  The greatness of that achievement cannot be pronounced imaginary since its reality has affected the destinies of nations. Nevertheless, in its grandeur it has all the remoteness of an ideal.

Note

Only spelling mistakes, if any, in the above passage have been corrected. No other corrections, including grammatical, have been made so that the originality of the passage is maintained.