side, than miss her and drift past. Make ready now to hail
her--all together--one,--two,--three! Bark aho-o-y! Stand by to throw
us a line!"

But no sound came from the huge black shadow under the pitching
lantern save the deep bass roar of the storm through the cordage.

We gave one more fierce, inarticulate cry as the dark outline of the
bark rose on a sea high above our heads; and then, with a staggering
shock and a great crash, the boat struck the ship's bow.

What happened in the next minute I hardly know. I have a confused
recollection of being thrown violently across a thwart in a white
smother of foam; of struggling to my feet and clutching frantically at
a wet, black wall, and of hearing some one shout in a wild, despairing
voice: "Watch ahoy! We're sinking! For God's sake throw us a
line!"--but that is all.

The water-logged sloop seesawed up and down past the bark's side, one
moment rising on a huge comber until I could almost grasp the rail,
and the next sinking into a deep hollow between the surges, far below
the line of the copper sheathing. We tore the ends of our finger-nails
off against the ship's side in trying to stop the boat's drift, and
shouted despairingly again and again for help and a line; but our
voices were drowned in the roar of the gale, there was no response,
and the next sea carried us under the bark's counter. I made one last
clutch at the smooth, wet planks; and then, as we drifted astern past
the ship, I abandoned hope.

The sloop was sinking rapidly,--I was already standing up to my knees
in water,--and in thirty seconds more we should be out of sight of the
bark, in the dark, tumbling sea to leeward, with no more chance of
rescue than if we were drowning in mid-Atlantic. Suddenly a dark
figure in the boat beside me,--I learned afterward that it was
Bowsher,--tore off his coat and waistcoat and made a bold leap into
the sea to windward. He knew that it was certain death to drift out of
sight of the bark in that sinking sloop, and he hoped to be able to
swim alongside until he should be picked up. I myself had not thought
of this before, but I saw instantly that it offered a forlorn hope of
escape, and I was just poised in the act of following his example when
on the quarter-deck of the bark, already twenty feet away, a white
ghost-like figure appeared with uplifted arm, and a hoarse voice
shouted, "Stand by to catch a line!"

It was the _Onward's_ second mate. He had heard our