nutes hence?"

Riddell was only half satisfied. His creed evidently was that a sailor's
first duty is to his own ship; but neither he nor any one else ever
argued with Guy. "As you like, sir," he grumbled, somewhat
discontentedly. "Keep her full, Saunders; we shall fetch them so."

If a stitch of sail had been taken off our vessel she could never have
reached the _barca_, though her crew strove hard to meet us. She forged
down slowly enough as it was, but we were just in time to take them on
board.

"Reef every thing now!" Riddell shouted, leaping himself first into the
rigging like a wild-cat. "Cheerily, men--with a will!" All his ill-humor
was gone when the peril became imminent.

We were strong-handed, and the four Capriotes did us seaman's service;
but it was "touch and go." The last man had scarcely reached the deck
when the line of foam was within half-cable's length. Then there came a
sound unlike any I had ever heard before in the elements, beginning with
a whistling sort of scream and deepening into a roar as of many angry
voices, bestial and human, striving for the mastery; and then the
_Petrel_ staggered and reeled over almost on her beam-ends, in the midst
of a white boiling caldron of mad water. She recovered herself, however,
quickly, quivering and trembling as a live creature might do after
severe punishment; and we drove on, the strong arms at the wheel keeping
her well before the blast. In a very few minutes, I suppose (though it
seemed very long), I heard old Riddell say, "Sharp while it lasted, Mr.
Livingstone; but they're right to call it a squall. They've nothing down
here-away like a good right down hard gale."

I looked up, clearing my eyes, blinded with the hissing spray, just as
Guy answered, coolly as ever. He had run his arm through a becket, and
did not seem to have moved otherwise, whereas I disgraced myself by
falling at full length as the squall struck us.

"Ah! you've got difficult to please; it's always so when one sees so
much of life. Never mind, Riddell, the Mediterranean does its best, and
perhaps we'll go and try your tornadoes some day. Where's the _barca_
now?"

Where? The eyes that could have told you that must have looked a hundred
fathoms deep. There was not the faintest vestige of such a thing to be
seen--not even a shivered plank. The poor Capriotes' "bread-winner" had
gone the way of Antonio's argosies--another whet to the all-devouring
appetite, for which nothing th