ill adhered, even after I had pointed out to
them that the island of Hayti constituted a lee-shore only some
twenty-five miles distant, upon which we must inevitably be dashed
before morning if we adopted their plan. The carpenter, however, took
my view that we must lose the guns in any case if the schooner went
ashore, and probably the ship and our lives as well; while by making a
timely sacrifice of the guns there was at least a possibility of saving
the ship. We were thus two to two; and as I was absolutely convinced
that the plan advocated by the gunner and the boatswain involved the
destruction of the ship and the drowning of at least as many of the poor
fellows below as were too seriously injured to be capable of taking care
of themselves, I unhesitatingly decided in favour of my own alternative,
and at once gave the order to throw the guns overboard without further
ado.

Watching our opportunity, therefore, and taking advantage of the roll of
the ship, we launched our 9-pounders overboard, one after the other,
until all six of them had vanished in the ocean depths; and the
increased liveliness of the little vessel at once demonstrated her
relief at the loss of so much weight from her deck.

The carpenter had just sounded the well, and had announced the joyous
news that at last the pumps were gaining upon the leak--which
announcement was greeted with a feeble cheer from the now utterly
exhausted men, who had for so long been toiling at the almost hopeless
task of clearing the ship of the inflowing water--when a sudden and
dreadful change occurred in the weather. The wind, which had been
blowing a whole gale a moment before, fell dead in an instant, an
appalling darkness overspread the firmament, and the atmosphere suddenly
became so rarefied that it seemed impossible for one to draw a full
breath; the sea, which a moment earlier had been breaking furiously,
ceased to do so, and instead began to leap high into the air, falling
back with a splash that, in the sudden stillness, seemed positively
terrifying, and the schooner, swinging broadside-on, rolled so furiously
that she momentarily threatened to turn bottom-up, while those of us who
were on deck had to seize hurriedly the first fixed portion of the
vessel's framework that we could lay hands on, to save ourselves from
being pitched overboard like a shot out of a catapult. To continue
pumping under such circumstances was impossible, for it needed both
hands