in. And the compass stanchioned on the bridge
had gone along with a wave, stanchions and all.

* * * * *

There was no use trying to rescue Gottlieb Kampke. Besides, he would be
dead as soon as he reached the water, in such a boiling sea, the captain
said to me.

The melancholy cry, "Man overboard!" ...

I took oath that if I ever reached home alive, I would never go to sea
again. If I just got home, alive, I would be willing even to tie up
brown parcels in grocery cord, for the rest of my life, to sweep out a
store day after day, regularly and monotonously, in safety!...

The captain saw me trembling with a nausea of fear. And, with the winds
booming from all sides, the deck as slippery as the body of a live eel,
he gave me a shove far out on the slant of the poop. I sped in the grey
drive of sleet clear to the rail. The ship dipped under as a huge wave
smashed over, all fury and foam, overwhelming the helmsman and bearing
down on me....

It was miraculous that I was not swept overboard.

After that, strangely, I no longer feared, but enjoyed a quickening of
pulse. And I gladly took in the turns in the rope as the men sang and
heaved away ... waves would heap up over us. We would hold tight till we
emerged again. Then again we would shout and haul away.

* * * * *

"It's all according to what you grow used to," commented the captain.

* * * * *

By the time I was beginning to look into the face of danger as into a
mother's face, the weather wore down. The ocean was still heavy with
running seas, but we rode high and dry.

* * * * *

Unlucky Kampke!

His shipmates bore his dunnage aft, for the captain to take in charge.
And, just as in melodramas and popular novels, a picture of a
fair-haired girl was found at the bottom of his sea-chest, together with
one of his mother ... his sweetheart and his mother....

Depositions were taken down from his forecastle mates, as to his going
overboard, and duly entered into the log ... and the captain wrote a
letter to his mother, to be mailed to her from Sydney.

* * * * *

For a day we were sad. An imminent sense of mortality hung over us.

But there broke, the next morning, a clear sky of sunshine and an open
though still yesty sea--and we sang, and became thoughtless and gay
again.

* *