est. Toward evening the wind settled down, and by
dark it was dead calm. But the terrific swells that swept up from the
south, the gradual fall of the barometer, and the lurid state of the sky
told me that there was a lot of trouble ahead of us yet. We were about
400 miles west of Fastnet at ten o'clock, and I lay down, giving my
first officer instructions to call me in case the wind rose. Just before
midnight I was aroused, and went on deck to find the wind coming in
short angry blasts from the nor'west. At midnight it came out with the
full force of a hurricane right in our teeth. In a short time a terrible
confused sea was running. It was a frightful night. At three o'clock in
the morning a thunder-storm swept over with the gale. Fierce lightning
and a deluge of rain combined to make an appalling scene. Daylight found
the ship reeling and staggering over huge jagged walls of water that
loomed up ahead of her as if they would swallow her. Just after four
o'clock a fearful sea fell bodily over the starboard quarter and stove
in one side of the cabin, filling it with water. I saw that it was
madness to try to drive the ship against such weather, and I hove her
to. When I went to my breakfast, Mr. Howard, my passenger, and his son
were there, very quiet and with white faces.

"'Will the ship sink, Captain?' asked the boy.

"'Oh no,' I answered; 'she's all right.'

"'But we sha'n't get home to mamma so soon,' murmured the boy,
mournfully."

[Illustration: FOR TWO WEEKS, INCH BY INCH, THE "BRISTOW" FOUGHT AGAINST
A SERIES OF WESTERLY GALES.]

"I had hove the ship to so as to bring the damaged side of the
deck-house to leeward, and I set the carpenter at work repairing it. We
were hove to for twenty-eight hours, and then, the weather moderating
somewhat, I started the _Bristow_ ahead at half speed. We had drifted
back fully seventy-five miles, and as we did not make more than three
knots an hour ahead, it took us fully a day to recover the lost ground.
Although the force of the wind had abated, it was still blowing a gale,
and the sea was sufficiently heavy to impede our progress very much. In
all my experience at sea I have never met with such heart-breaking
weather. If the wind had only shifted to our beam I would have been
profoundly grateful, while a hurricane on our quarter, disturbing at any
other time, would have filled me with joy. That boy's pale anxious face
and the thought of the sick mother at home haunted