g her decks. There was a sharp warning cry. In her wake,
rearing up higher and higher as it sped on, came a huge green wall--
rearing up till it seemed to shut out the very heavens. Watching it
with an awestruck fascination, Gerard marked its crest curl, then, with
a terrible and appalling crash, it burst full upon their decks.

For a moment he could not have told whether he was overboard, or not.
The shock, the continuous pouring rush of the mighty wave--by no means
over in a moment--was so stunning, so bewildering in its effect, that
his senses were utterly confused. But for his firm hold of the iron
ring, he would have been swept away like a feather. Hold on to it,
however, he did, and with good reason. The first shock was but an
earnest of what was to follow. Crash after crash, the game little craft
burying herself completely beneath the mighty seas, to rise again like a
duck, only to be sent staggering under once more, as a fresh roller
broke in bellowing fury upon her. The rattle of her steering chains,
the harsh and laboured clank of her engines, the sharp whirr of her
propeller spinning clear of the water, the stifled shrieks of terrified
female passengers hermetically sealed up in the cabin below--these alone
were the sounds heard through the deafening roar of the surf, the
swirling din of cataracts pouring along her heaving decks. A quarter of
an hour of this raging, seething cauldron of waters, of buffeting,
staggering, plunging, rolling half under, and there was a sudden calm.
The terrible bar was passed; and none the worse for her rough usage, the
staunch little craft sped blithely over the still waters of the
land-locked harbour.

Then, released from their imprisonment, the passengers came swarming on
deck, and a woeful sight they presented. Pallid, shaky, grime-besmeared
and otherwise the worse for wear, not a man but looked as though he had
been turned prematurely out of a hospital, while many of the females
were in a fainting and hysterical condition. And small wonder. Here
were these unfortunate people sealed up in a square box, whose sole
furniture consisted of a wooden bench let into each side, and thus, with
nothing in the world to hold on to, literally shaken up as though in a
cask rolling downhill, every frantic plunge of the vessel sending them
tumbling over and over each other on the floor; many, too, in the
wildest throes of sea-sickness; add to this the darkness, the horrible
stif