more hawser, veered her, and dropped
the second anchor.

There was little sleep after that, for first one and then the other of us
would be rolled out of our bunks. The increasing size of the seas told
us we were dragging, and when we struck the scoured channel we could tell
by the feel of it that our two anchors were fairly skating across. It
was a deep channel, the farther edge of it rising steeply like the wall
of a canyon, and when our anchors started up that wall they hit in and
held.

Yet, when we fetched up, through the darkness we could hear the seas
breaking on the solid shore astern, and so near was it that we shortened
the skiff's painter.

Daylight showed us that between the stern of the skiff and destruction
was no more than a score of feet. And how it did blow! There were
times, in the gusts, when the wind must have approached a velocity of
seventy or eighty miles an hour. But the anchors held, and so nobly that
our final anxiety was that the for'ard bitts would be jerked clean out of
the boat. All day the sloop alternately ducked her nose under and sat
down on her stern; and it was not till late afternoon that the storm
broke in one last and worst mad gust. For a full five minutes an
absolute dead calm prevailed, and then, with the suddenness of a
thunderclap, the wind snorted out of the southwest--a shift of eight
points and a boisterous gale. Another night of it was too much for us,
and we hove up by hand in a cross head-sea. It was not stiff work. It
was heart-breaking. And I know we were both near to crying from the hurt
and the exhaustion. And when we did get the first anchor up-and-down we
couldn't break it out. Between seas we snubbed her nose down to it, took
plenty of turns, and stood clear as she jumped. Almost everything
smashed and parted except the anchor-hold. The chocks were jerked out,
the rail torn off, and the very covering-board splintered, and still the
anchor held. At last, hoisting the reefed mainsail and slacking off a
few of the hard-won feet of the chain, we sailed the anchor out. It was
nip and tuck, though, and there were times when the boat was knocked down
flat. We repeated the manoeuvre with the remaining anchor, and in the
gathering darkness fled into the shelter of the river's mouth.

I was born so long ago that I grew up before the era of gasolene. As a
result, I am old-fashioned. I prefer a sail-boat to a motor-boat, and it
is my belief that boat-