stern and
yawed the schooner to port--"and make him help himself for the rest.
Unship the fo'castle hatch and get him down into a bunk. Then ship the
hatch again."

The captain turned his aged face forward and wavered pitifully. The
waist of the ship was full of water to the bulwarks. He had just come
through it, and knew death lurked every inch of the way.

"Go!" Chris shouted, fiercely. And as the fear-stricken man started,
"And take another look for the cook!"

Two hours later, almost dead from suffering, the captain returned. He
had obeyed orders. The sailing-master was helpless, although safe in a
bunk; the cook was gone. Chris sent the captain below to the cabin to
change his clothes.

After interminable hours of toil day broke cold and gray. Chris looked
about him. The _Sophie Sutherland_ was racing before the typhoon like a
thing possessed. There was no rain, but the wind whipped the spray of
the sea mast-high, obscuring everything except in the immediate
neighborhood.

Two waves only could Chris see at a time--the one before and the one
behind. So small and insignificant the schooner seemed on the long
Pacific roll! Rushing up a maddening mountain, she would poise like a
cockle-shell on the giddy summit, breathless and rolling, leap outward
and down into the yawning chasm beneath, and bury herself in the smother
of foam at the bottom. Then the recovery, another mountain, another
sickening upward rush, another poise, and the downward crash. Abreast of
him, to starboard, like a ghost of the storm, Chris saw the cook dashing
apace with the schooner. Evidently, when washed overboard, he had
grasped and become entangled in a trailing halyard.

For three hours more, alone with this gruesome companion, Chris held the
_Sophie Sutherland_ before the wind and sea. He had long since forgotten
his mangled fingers. The bandages had been torn away, and the cold, salt
spray had eaten into the half-healed wounds until they were numb and no
longer pained. But he was not cold. The terrific labor of steering
forced the perspiration from every pore. Yet he was faint and weak with
hunger and exhaustion, and hailed with delight the advent on deck of the
captain, who fed him all of a pound of cake-chocolate. It strengthened
him at once.

He ordered the captain to cut the halyard by which the cook's body was
towing, and also to go forward and cut loose the jib-halyard and sheet.
When he had done so, the jib fluttered a coupl