We kept inside the Race, which in stormy weather, with the wind meeting the tide, is excessively dangerous.  The seas rise up as if some power is moving the water from beneath, and letting it suddenly fall down again.  When it thus falls down on the deck of a small vessel, all steerage-way being lost, she is drifted along, utterly helpless, by the tide, and if heavily laden, possibly sent to the bottom.  Vessels, however, when passing the Bill of Portland, keep outside the Race, or, when the wind is off the land, close to the shore, as we were doing. When they are caught by a current in a calm, they are drifted through it.