eings. Then, suddenly conscious of
the fact that I was within the influence of the downward draught of the
sinking schooner, and was being dragged down after her, I instinctively
struck upward desperately with hands and feet, fighting to return to the
surface. I must have been dragged down to a very considerable depth,
for I presently lost sight of the phosphorescent light on the surface
caused by the breaking of the seas, and found myself involved in pitchy
darkness, struggling madly, and with my lungs almost bursting. How long
this awful struggle lasted I have no means of determining; probably it
was much less than a minute, but the time seemed to drag itself out
first to minutes, then to hours, and finally I lost all idea of time,
all sense of my terrible situation, all recollection of the dreadful
catastrophe that had just happened, and found myself, as in a vivid
dream, re-enacting many a long-forgotten episode of earlier days. Then,
in a moment, all these scenes vanished, and I was suddenly--I knew not
how--on the surface, gasping for breath, half smothered with the seas
that were breaking over my head, and convulsively clutching a rope that
had somehow found its way into my grasp. Gradually it dawned upon me
that this rope must be fast to something--for it alternately tautened
and slackened with the sweep and swirl of the sea--thereupon I proceeded
to haul cautiously upon it, with the result that I presently found
myself alongside the floating wreckage of the mainmast. With some
difficulty I at length managed to drag myself up and get astride this
substantial spar; and then, finding that it did not roll over and throw
me off, as I more than half feared it would, I gradually worked my way
along it until I found myself close up against the crosstrees. And then
I thought I perceived the reason why the spar maintained its stability
so well. The mainsail had been set when the mast was shot away, and the
gaff, with the sail attached, still retained its position on the mast,
the main halliards having somehow jammed in the block, and this it
evidently was that prevented the spar from capsizing. The rope by which
I had hauled myself alongside the spar proved to be the end of the
peak-halliards, and I thought that if I made this fast, and so prevented
the peak from sagging, I should secure still further the stability of
the wreckage; I accordingly did so, knotting the bight round one arm of
the crosstrees, and then