y
answer. Maybe it was a sort of craze of mine for the moment, but I was
wild with eagerness to leave that mast as soon as ever I began to fear
for it. I cast my lashings adrift and gave a look at the deck, and saw
that I must not go that way if I did not want to be drowned. So I
swung myself into the crosstrees, and swung myself on to the stay, so
reaching the maintop, and then I scrambled on to the main topmast
crosstrees, and went hand over hand down the topmast stay into the
foretop. Had I reflected before I left the mizzentop, I should not
have believed that I had the strength to work my way for'rards like
that; my hands felt as if they were skinned and my finger-joints
appeared to have no use in them. There were nine or ten men in the
foretop, all lashed and huddled together. The mast rocked sharply, and
the throbbing of it to the blowing of the great tatters of canvas was a
horrible sensation. From time to time they sent up rockets from the
Sunk lightship--once every hour, I think--but we had long since ceased
to notice those signals. There was not a man but thought his time was
come, and, though death seemed terrible when I looked down upon the
boiling waters below, yet the anguish of the cold almost killed the
craving for life.

'It was now about three o'clock on Thursday morning; the air was full
of the strange, dim light of the foam and the stars, and I could very
plainly see the black swarm of men in the top and rigging of the
mizzenmast. I was looking that way, when a great sea fell upon the
hull of the ship with a fearful crash; a moment after, the mainmast
went. It fell quickly, and as it fell it bore down the mizzenmast.
There was a horrible noise of splintering wood and some piercing cries,
and then another great sea swept over the after-deck, and we who were
in the foretop looked and saw the stumps of the two masts sticking up
from the bottom of the hold, the mizzenmast slanting over the bulwarks
into the water, and the men lashed to it drowning. There never was a
more shocking sight, and the wonder is that some of us who saw it did
not go raving mad. The foremast still stood, complete to the royal
mast and all the yards across, but every instant I expected to find
myself hurling through the air. By this time the ship was completely
gutted, the upper part of her a mere frame of ribs, and the gale still
blew furiously; indeed, I gave up hope when the mizzenmast fell and I
saw my shipmates