No one was at the helm, not a reef was in the sail.

The masts were carried away by the furious gusts, and the wreck was driven before the wind.
Then came a great ship which passed over the _Ariel_ as the _Ariel_ would have passed a floating feather.
Arthur Pym gives the fullest details of the rescue of his companion and himself after this collision, under conditions of extreme difficulty.

At length, thanks to the second officer of the _Penguin_, from New London, which arrived on the scene of the catastrophe, the comrades were picked with life all but extinct, and taken back to Nantucket.
This adventure, to which I cannot deny an appearance veracity, was an ingenious preparation for the chapters that were to follow, and indeed, up to the day on which Pym penetrates into the polar circle, the narrative might conceivably be regarded as authentic.

But, beyond the polar circle, above the austral icebergs, it is quite another thing, and, if the author's work be not one of pure imagination, I am--well, of any other nationality than my own.

Let us get on.
Their first adventure had not cooled the two youths, and eight months after the affair of the _Ariel_--June, 1827--the brig __Grampus__ was fitted out by the house of Lloyd and Vredenburg for whaling in the southern seas.