d struck his forehead.

"Wind," he screamed at the top of his voice, and jumped for the halliards.

Thrackles followed him, but no one else moved. In an instant the two were
back, striking and kicking savagely, rousing their companions to the
danger. We all laid into the canvas like mad, and in no time had snugged
down to a staysail and the peak of our mainsail. Thrackles drew his knife
and jumped for the cable, while Handy Solomon, his eyes snapping, seized
the wheel.

We finished just in time. I was turning away after tying the last gasket
on the foresail, when the deck up-ended and tipped me headforemost into
the starboard scupper. At the same time a smother of salt water blew over
the port rail, now far above me, to drench me as thoroughly as though I
had fallen overboard. I brushed out my eyes to find the ship smack on her
beam ends, and the wind howling by from the sea.

I had company enough in the scuppers. Only Handy Solomon clung desperately
to the wheel, jamming his weight to port in the hope she might pay up:
Thrackles, too, his eye squinted along some bearing of his own, was
waiting for her to drag. Presently it became evident that she was doing
so, whereupon he drew his knife across our hawser.

"My God," chattered Pulz at my ear. "If we go ashore--"

He did not need to finish. Unless the _Laughing Lass_ could recover before
the squall had driven her to leeward a scant half mile, we should be
cooked alive in the boiling cauldron at the shore's edge.

For an interminable time, as it seemed to me, we lay absolutely
motionless. The scene is stamped indelibly on my memory--the bulwarks high
above me, the steep, sleek deck, the piratical figure tense at the wheel,
the snarling water racing from beneath us, the lurid glow to landward
crawling up on us inch by inch like a hungry wild beast. Then almost
imperceptibly the brave schooner righted. The strained lines on Handy
Solomon's carven features relaxed little by little. Thrackles, staring
over the side, let out a mighty roar.

"Steerage way," he shouted, and executed an awkward clog dance on the
reeling deck.

She moved forward, there was no doubt of that, for gradually we were
eating toward the wind--but we made considerable leeway as well. Handy
Solomon, taut as the weather rigging, took his little advantages one by
one like precious gifts. Light there was none; the land was blotted out by
the steam and murk which had crept to sea and now was hurled b