found ourselves forced to lay-to. It blew all
that day and all that night; towards noon the
next day, it lulled a little, and we made sail
again, But at sunset, the heavens grew blacker
than ever; and the wind returned upon us with
double and treble fury. The Peruvian was a
fine stout roomy ship, but the unhandiest vessel
at laying-to I ever sailed in. After taking tons
of water on board and losing our best boat, we
had nothing left for it but to turn tail, and scud
for our lives. For the next three days and
nights we ran before the wind. The gale
moderated more than once in that time; but there
was such a sea on, that we durstn't heave the
ship to. From the beginning of the gale none
of us officers had a chance of taking any
observations. We only knew that the wind was
driving us as hard as we could go in a southerly
direction, and that we were by this time
hundreds of miles out of the ordinary course of
ships in doubling the Cape.

On the third night—or rather, I should say,
early on the fourth morning I went below,
dead beat, to get a little rest, leaving the vessel
in charge of the captain and the first mate.
The night was then pitch-black—it was raining,
hailing, and sleeting, all at once and the
Peruvian was wallowing in the frightful seas, as if
she meant to roll the masts out of her. I
tumbled into bed the instant my wet oilskins
were off my back, and slept as only a man can
who lays himself down dead beat.

I was woke—how long afterwards I don't
know—by being pitched clean out of my berth
on to the cabin floor; and, at the same moment,
I heard the crash of the ship's timbers, forward,
which told me it was all over with us.

Though bruised and shaken by my fall, I was
on deck directly. Before I had taken two steps
forward, the Peruvian forged ahead on the send
of the sea, swung round a little, and struck
heavily at the bows for the second time. The
shrouds of the foremast cracked one after
another, like pistol-shots; and the mast went
overboard. I next felt our people go tearing
past me, in the black darkness, to the lee-side
of the vessel; and I knew that, in their last
extremity, they were taking to the boats. I say
I felt them go past me, because the roaring of
the sea and the howling of the wind deafened
me, on deck, as completely as the darkness
blinded me. I myself no more believed the
boats would live in the sea, than I believed the
ship would hold together on the reef—but, as
the rest were running the risk, I made up my
mind to run it with them.

But before I followed the crew to leeward, I
went below again for a minute—not to save
money or clothes, for, with death staring me in
the face, neither were of any account, now—
but to get my little writing-case which mother
had given me at parting. A curl of Margaret's
hair was in the pocket inside it, with all the
letters she had sent me when I had been away
on other voyages. If I saved anything I was
resolved to save this and—if I died, I would
die with it about me.

My locker was jammed with the wrenching
of the ship, and had to be broken open. I was,
maybe, longer over this job than I myself
supposed. At any rate, when I got on deck again
with my case in my breast, it was useless calling,
and useless groping about. The largest of the
two boats, when I felt for it, was gone; and
every soul on board was beyond a doubt gone
with her.

Before I had time to think, I was thrown off
my feet, by another sea coming on board, and a
great heave of the vessel, which drove her
farther over the reef, and canted the after-part
of her up like the roof of a house. In that
position the stern stuck, wedged fast into the
rocks beneath, while the fore-part of the ship
was all to pieces and down under water. If the
after-part kept the place it was now jammed in,
till daylight, there might be a chance—but if
the sea wrenched it out from between the rocks,
there was an end of me. After straining my
eyes to discover if there was land beyond the
reef, and seeing nothing but the flash of the
breakers, like white fire in the darkness, I crawled
below again to the shelter of the cabin stairs,
and waited for death or daylight.

As the morning hours wore on, the weather
moderated again; and the after-part of the
vessel, though shaken often, was not shaken
out of its place. A little before dawn, the
winds and the waves, though fierce enough still,
allowed me, at last, to hear something besides
themselves. What I did hear, crouched up in
my dark Corner, was a heavy thumping and
grinding, every now and then, against the side
of the ship to windward. Day broke soon
afterwards; and, when I climbed to the deck,
I clawed my way up to windward first, to see
what the noise was caused by.

My first look over the bulwark showed me
that it was caused by the boat which my
unfortunate brother-officers and the crew had
launched and gone away in when the ship
struck. The boat was bottom upwards, thumping
against the ship's side on the lift of the sea.
I wanted no second look at it to tell me that
every mother's son of them was drowned.

The main and mizen masts still stood. I got
into the mizen rigging, to look out next to
leeward—and there, in the blessed daylight, I
saw a low, green, rocky little island, lying away
beyond the reef, barely a mile distant from the
ship! My life began to look of some small
value to me again, when I saw land. I got
higher up in the rigging to note how the
current set, and where there might be a passage
through the reef. The ship had driven over the
rocks through the worst of the surf, and the sea
between myself and the island, though angry
and broken in places, was not too high for a
lost man like me to venture on—provided I
could launch the last, and smallest, boat still
left in the vessel. I noted carefully the
likeliest-looking channel for trying the experiment,
and then got down on deck again to see what I
could do, first of all, with the boat.

At the moment when my feet touched the