. Seabury; "how do you know? The Captain
hasn't said so."

"The barometer has fallen rapidly for the last six hours, and the wind
has been backing from west to southwest and so on around to southeast,"
said Thornton, "and there's going to be a gale. The Captain hasn't said
anything, because he does not wish to frighten you."

Two hours later it began to blow in short uneasy puffs from the
southeast, and Captain Whitby ordered the top-sails and foretopmast
stay-sail taken in. He laid the vessel by the wind on the starboard
tack, intending to push out as far as possible from dangerous proximity
to the coast. At six o'clock in the evening it was blowing freshly, and
the long swells were cut up into foaming ridges.

"Get the fore-sail off her!" cried Captain Whitby to his little crew,
and presently the big sheet of canvas was furled snugly on its boom.

"In jib, and lay aft to reef the mains'l!"

It was wild weather now, and no mistake. The big roaring green billows
came raging down out of the dusk in the southeast, and as the schooner
would lean far over to meet them it looked as if they were going to bury
her. But as each sea approached, the schooner's bowsprit would swing
upward with a great heave, the sea under-ran her, and down she came with
a crash and a cloud of spray into the screeching hollow.

"I'll have to ask you all to go below," said the Captain; "it isn't safe
for you to be on deck. You might get washed overboard."

Shut in the badly lighted little cabin, with the one lamp swinging
madly, the agonized groaning of timbers all around them, and the thunder
of tons of water falling on the deck above them, the Seaburys began to
wish that they had never left their little home to go out on the
treacherous ocean. They did not go to bed, but sat on the lockers,
holding fast with both hands, and momentarily expecting that some
terrible catastrophe would happen. About three o'clock in the morning
they heard a loud shout and a heavy thump on the deck, followed by a
rapid shuffling of feet.

"What can have happened?" exclaimed Mr. Seabury.

"Oh, they're coming to tell us that we must take to the life-boat!"
cried Mrs. Seabury.

The cabin door was pushed open, and three sailors stumbled in, bearing
the inanimate form of the Captain.

"One o' the main throat-halyard blocks fell from aloft," said a sailor,
"an' hit him. I reckon he's hurt bad."

The Captain was laid in his bunk, and Mrs. Seabury forgot her fear