and all one's strength to merely hold on.

"Now what's goin' to happen, I wonder!" growled the gunner, who was
clinging with me to a belaying-pin in a part of the rail that still
remained intact in the wake of the main rigging. "I can understand a
gale o' wind, Mr Delamere, but this here sudden calm don't seem natural
to me."

"It is not natural," said I; "the mere look of the sky is sufficient to
assure us of that. There is something behind it, you may be certain,
though what it is I am sure I cannot say; possibly it may be a fresh
outfly from some other point of the compass, or it may end up with a
violent thunderstorm, though I do not think it will; that sky--"

"No, no," interrupted Henderson, "there's no thunder there, sir, ye may
take my word for it. Listen, Mr Delamere! D'ye hear that?"

I thought for an instant that he was directing my attention to the
pitiful cries and moans that were being extorted from the unhappy
wounded down below as they were flung hither and thither by the furious
lurches of the schooner, and I was about to make some sort of reply when
a low moaning smote upon my ear, increasing with appalling rapidity to a
fierce medley of sounds, in which the savage roars of maddened beasts
and the shrieks and wailings of mortally terrified human beings seemed
to be about equally mingled; a long line of phosphorescent white
appeared upon the northern horizon, showing up with ghastly distinctness
against the background of black scowling sky; a fierce scuffle of hot
wet wind swept over us and was gone again, leaving a taste of salt upon
our lips, and with a deafening howl, as of concentrated fury, the
tempest leapt upon us, filling the air with drenching spindrift and
scudwater, while, taking the schooner fair abeam, it heeled her over
until the water was up nearly level with the coamings of her hatchways.
For nearly a minute she lay thus, and despite the fact that she was
dismasted I believed that she was about to turn turtle with us, when
gradually, as the drag of the wreckage ahead brought her round head to
wind again, she righted to an even keel once more and rode almost as
still as though she were in harbour, while the spindrift and scudwater
raked her decks fore and aft like a continuous tempest of small shot,
which stung our faces and hands so severely that it was literally
impossible to face it, and turning our backs to it and dropping upon our
hands and knees, we were driven to creep for