ship with indescribable fury,
striking her full upon her starboard broadside, and hurling her over in
an instant on her beam-ends. The group gathered about the companion-way
made an instinctive effort to save themselves, Rex Fortescue flinging
his arm about Violet Dudley's waist and dragging her with him to the
mizen-mast, where he hung on desperately to a belaying-pin. Brook
nimbly scrambled upon the upturned weather side of the companion.
Evelin, exasperated by Mr Dale's ill-timed anxiety about his book, had
stepped inside the companion-way and down a stair or two to summarily
remove the obstructor, and the two were flung together to the bottom of
the staircase. Blanche, left thus without a protector, clung
convulsively for a moment to one of the open doors of the companion; but
her strength failing her, she let go and fell backwards with a shriek
into the water which foamed hungrily up over the lee rail.

Bob, who had made a spring for the weather mizen rigging, was just
passing a turn or two of a rope round his body when, happening to turn
his head, he saw Blanche fall. To cast himself adrift and spring
headlong after her was the work of an instant, and he succeeded in
grasping her dress just in the nick of time, for in another instant the
ship would have driven over her, and Blanche's fate would have been
sealed. As it was, they both had a very narrow escape, for Bob in his
haste had omitted to take a rope's-end with him, and had consequently no
means of returning inboard, or rather, for the lee side of the deck was
buried in the water, of regaining a place of safety. In this emergency
Brook, who was a witness of the scene, acted in a very prompt and
creditable manner. The rope, by which Bob had been in the act of
securing himself, streamed out in the wind in such a way as to come
within Brook's reach, and by its aid he at once drew himself up to
windward, and, climbing out on to the weather side of the ship,
dexterously dropped from thence a coiled-up rope's-end, which he had
taken off a belaying-pin, directly down upon Bob's head. Bob at once
grasped the rope with his disengaged hand, and with a rapid twist threw
two or three turns round his arm, whereupon Brook, exerting all his
strength, drew his prizes steadily up the steeply inclined deck until
they were able to scramble into the place he had vacated upon the
companion.

CHAPTER SIX.

DISMASTED.

As the hurricane swooped down upon the ship,