ft, powder enough to blow us all to eternity! On
deck, one brave man, two chittering lads, and a gin-soaked pilot
steering a crazy course among the fanged reefs of Labrador.

The wind backed and veered and came again so that a weather-vane could
not have shown which way it blew. At one moment the ship was jumping
from wave to wave before the wind with a single tiny storms'l out. At
another I had thought we must scud under bare poles for open sea.

The coast sheered vertical like a rampart wall, and up--up--up that
dripping rock clutched the tossing billows like watery arms of sirens.
It needed no seaman to prophecy the fate of a boat caught between that
rock and a nor'easter.

Then the gale would veer, and out raced a tidal billow of waters like
to take the St. Pierre broadside.

"Helm hard alee!" shouts Radisson in the teeth of the gale.

For the fraction of a second we were driving before the oncoming rush.

Then the sea rose up in a wall on our rear.

There was a shattering crash. The billows broke in sheets of whipping
spray. The decks swam with a river of waters. One gun wrenched loose,
teetered to the roll, and pitched into the seething deep. Yard-arms
came splintering to the deck. There was a roaring of waters over us,
under us, round us--then M. de Radisson, Jean, and I went slithering
forward like water-rats caught in a whirlpool. My feet struck against
windlass chains. Jean saved himself from washing overboard by
cannoning into me; but before the dripping bowsprit rose again to mount
the swell, M. de Radisson was up, shaking off spray like a water-dog
and muttering to himself: "To be snuffed out like a candle--no--no--no,
my fine fellows! Leap to meet it! Leap to meet it!"

And he was at the wheel himself.

The ship gave a long shudder, staggered back, stern foremost, to the
trough of the swell, and lay weltering cataracts from her decks.

There was a pause of sudden quiet, the quiet of forces gathering
strength for fiercer assault; and in that pause I remembered something
had flung over me in the wash of the breaking sea. I looked to the
crosstrees. The mutineer was gone.

It was the first and last time that I have ever seen a smoking sea.
The ocean boiled white. Far out in the wake of the tide that had
caught us foam smoked on the track of the ploughing waters.
Waters--did I say? You could not see waters for the spray.

Then Jean bade me look how the stays'l had been torn to flut