em.

"Durn my boots!" ejaculated the American once; "but if them air sheep
hadn't gone overboard to feed the fishes, I guess we'd hev hed capers
enuff goin' on down har to sarve for sass to the biled mutton!"

All put up, however, with these petty annoyances gleefully enough, only
too glad to be able to joke and make capital out of them and pleased
that their present calamities were not too serious for laughter; and
when they separated at bedtime, it was with the cheerful wish that the
weather might be a trifle brighter on the morrow. No one seemed to
think for a moment of danger, or took heed of the bustle on deck, or of
the quivering and shaking of everything in the saloon, which seemed
suffering from what Mr Lathrope styled a "seaquake"--in
contradistinction to earthquake.

But, hardly had six bells been struck in the first watch when the order
"out lights" was given and the welcome gleam of the cuddy lamp
disappeared summarily, plunging all in darkness--than a sudden
stupendous shock assailed the ship startling the sleepers.

There came first a stunning blow, apparently from a wave, right
amidships; and then, the vessel seemed to go down to the very water's
edge on one side, heeling over as rapidly immediately afterwards to the
other.

Away went everything that was movable below, flung backwards and then
forwards right across the ship--the thumping noise made by the heavy
boxes falling in the cabins and state-rooms, combined with the crashing
and smashing of glass and crockeryware in the cuddy, where the table and
settle-seats had been carried away by the run, and the outcry of the
sailors yelling and stamping above, not to speak of the grinding and
groaning of the bulkheads and shuddering of the ship's timbers between
decks, all making up a babel of sound and confusion that was worse by a
thousand fold than what had previously occurred during the first storm
which the vessel, experienced in the Bay of Biscay.

Naturally, the majority of those below thought that all was over, and
piercing cries of terror and appeal for help resounded through the ship.

CHAPTER TEN.

CAUGHT IN A CYCLONE.

A storm at sea is bad enough in the daytime, but at night it is
terrible; for then, the peril unseen is so magnified by the terror-
stricken mind as to become far more appalling than a much greater danger
seen face to face and realised:-- the latter can be grappled with, but
the former, by its very intangibility and