and the wind just then came fiercer, caught
him, and flattened him against the rigging as
tight as if Nature had caught up a mountain for
a hammer and nailed him with a cedar; he was
spread-eagled. The men accepted him at once
as a new patent ratline with a fine resisting
power: they went up him, and bounded three
ordinary ratlines at a go off all his promontories,
especially his shoulders, and his head, receivimg
his compliments in the shape of hearty
curses: they gained the top and lay out on
the yard with their hair flying like streamers:
and who got the place of honour, but Thompson,
the jolly fore-topman, who couldn't stand
smoked pea soup. So strong and so weak are
men.

Thompson raised his knife high; there was
a pause: then in went all their knives, and
away went the sail into the night of the storm,
and soon seemed a sheet of writing-paper and
more likely to hit the sky than the sea. The
men came down, picked their officer off the
rigging, had a dram in the captain's cabin,
and saw him enter their names in the log-book
for good service, and in the purser's
for extra grog on Sundays from there to
Gravesend.

The ship was relieved; and all looked well,
till the chronometer, their only guide now,
announced sunset: when the wind, incredible as it
may appear, increased, and one frightful squall
dipped the muzzles of the lee carronades in the
water.

Then was heard the first cry of distress: an
appalling sound; the wail of brave men. And
they had borne it all so bravely, so cheerfully,
till now. But now they knew something must
go, or else the ship; the suspense was awful,
but very short, Crack! crash ! the fore and
main topmast both gone; short off by the caps;
and the ship recovered slowly, hesitatingly,
tremblingly.

Relieving her from one danger this subjected
her to another and a terrible one. The heavy
spars that had fallen, unable to break loose from
the rigging, pounded the ship so savagely as to
threaten to stave in her side.

But neither this stout captain nor his crew
shirked any danger men had ever grappled with
since men were; Dodd ordered them to cut
away the wreck to leeward: it was done: then
to windward: this, the more ticklish operation,
was also done smartly: the wreck passed under
the ship's quarter, and she drifted clear of it.
They breathed again.

At eight bells in the first watch it began to
thunder and lighten furiously; but the thunder,
though close, was quite inaudible in the
tremendous uproar of the wind and sea. It blew a
hurricane: there were no more squalls now;
but one continuous tornado, which in its passage
through that great gaunt skeleton, the ship's
rigging and bare poles, howled and yelled and
roared so terrifically, as would have silenced a
salvo of artillery fired alongside. The
overwhelming sea ran in dark watery mountains
crested with devilish fire. The inky blackness
added supernatural horror; the wrath of the
Almighty seemed upon them: and his hand to
drop the black sky down on them for their
funeral pall. Surely Noah from his ark saw
nothing more terrible.

What is that? close on the lee bow: close:
the flash of a gun: another; another; another.
A ship in distress firing minute guns, in their
ears; yet no sound: human thunder silenced, as
God's thunder was silenced, by the uproar of
his greater creatures in their mad rage. The
Agra fired two minute guns to let the other
poor ship know she had a companion in her
helplessness, and her distress; and probably a
companion in her fate. Even this companionship
added its mite of danger: for both ships
were mere playthings of the elements; they
might be tossed together; and then, what would
be their fate? Two eggs clashed together in
a great boiling caldron, and all the life spilt
out.

Yet did each flash shoot a ray of humanity
and sympathy into the thick black supernatural
horror.

And now came calamity upon calamity. A
tremendous sea broke the tiller at the rudder-head,
and not only was the ship in danger of
falling off and shipping the sea; but the rudder
hammered her awfully, and bade fair to stave in
her counter, which is another word for Destruction.
Thus death came at them with two hands
open at once.

These vessels always carry a spare tiller:
they tried to ship it: but the difficulty was
prodigious. No light but the miserable deck
lantern—one glow-worm in Egypt supernaturally
darkened—the Agra never on an even keel,
and heeling over like a sea-saw more than a
ship; and then every time they did place the
tiller, and get the strain on with their luff
tackles, the awful sea gave it a blow and knocked
it away like a hair.

At last they hit it off, or thought they had,
for the ponderous thumps of the rudder ceased
entirely. However, the ship did not obey this
new tiller like the old one: her head fell off in
an unlucky moment when seven waves were
rolling in one, and, on coming to the windward
again, she shipped a sea. It came in over her
bow transversely; broke as high as the mainstay,
and hid and buried the whole ship before
the mast: carried away the waist bulwarks on
both sides, filled the launch, and drowned the
live stock which were in it: swept four water-butts
and three men away into the sea, like
corns and straws; and sent tons of water down
the forescuttle and main hatchway, which was
partly opened not to stifle the crew; and flooded
the gun deck ankle deep.

Dodd, who was in his cabin, sent the whole
crew to the pumps, except the man at the
wheel; and prepared for the worst.

In men so brave as he was, when Hope dies,
Fear dies. His chief care now was to separate
the fate of those he loved from his own. He
took a bottle, inserted the fatal money in it,
with a few words of love to his wife, and of