They had to make openings in the bulwarks in order to provide a vent for the crushing mass.
The southern day was a livid and foggy eclipse, repeating itself for weeks and weeks without the slightest streak of clearing, as though the sun had departed from the earth forever.

Not a glimmer of white existed in this tempestuous outline; always gray,--the sky, the foam, the seagulls, the snows....

From time to time the leaden veils of the tempest were torn asunder, leaving visible a terrifying apparition.
Once it was black mountains with glacial winding sheets from the Straits of Beagle.

And the boat tacked, fleeing away from this narrow aquatic passageway full of perilous ledges.

Another time the peaks of Diego Ramirez, the most extreme point of the cape, loomed up before the prow, and the bark again tacked, fleeing from this cemetery of ships.
The wind shifting, then brought their first icebergs into view and at the same time forced them to turn back on their course in order not to be lost in the deserts of the South Pole.
Ferragut came to believe that they would never double the Cape, remaining forever in full tempest, like the accursed ship of the legend of the Flying Dutchman.