e it very difficult to steer
before it. Fortunately our topmasts were housed, or they would have
been jerked overboard. I asked McAllister what he proposed doing.

"Doing! Why, of course, scud on till the hurricane has blown itself
out," he answered.

"But doesn't the wind sometimes shift in a hurricane, and blow more
furiously from another quarter?" I asked.

"Of course it does, and perhaps it will, and we shall be blown back
again as far as we have come," he said, taking a look at the compass.

"But suppose it was to blow us back farther than we have come," I
observed.

"Merry, just go and bring the chart to the companion stair," was his
answer. "It will be blown away if we have it on deck, and I cannot go
below just now."

I brought the chart, at which he took a rapid glance. Eastward, as we
were now driving, we had plenty of sea-room, and in a wholesome craft
like ours, there was nothing to fear; but westward there was the coast
of Central America, fringed by rocks and sandbanks, on which many a
noble ship has been stranded since Columbus discovered the western
world.

"It is to be hoped that the wind will not shift," he answered. "It does
not always. Don't let us anticipate evil."

Lieutenant Preville inquired what we were talking about. We told him.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Patience; the fortune of war; we seamen
must always be subject to such reverses," he remarked.

"The Frenchman takes things easily," observed McAllister. "I wish that
I could do so."

I had never before pictured to myself what a West India hurricane really
was. At times I thought that the schooner would be blown fairly out of
the water. How her masts remained in her was a puzzle, from the way she
jerked and rolled, and plunged madly onward, struggling away from the
seas which seemed every moment as if they would catch and overwhelm her.
Even though thus flying before the gale, we felt as if we should be
blown down, had we not kept a good grip of the bulwarks, and those
forward had hard work to make their way aft. Suddenly there was a lull.
The effect was curious; I can liken it to nothing but when, by shutting
a thick door, some loud hubbub of angry voices is no longer heard. The
schooner tumbled about just as much as before, or even more, but,
instead of being driven onward, she was thrown madly from wave to wave,
backwards and forwards; it seemed as if they were playing a game of ball
with her. McAllister order