b were blown from the
bolt-ropes, the topsails and courses were flying in shreds from the
yards, the topsail sheets, clew-lines and bunt-lines were carried away,
as were also the main-clew garnets, bunt-lines and leech-lines, while a
more tremendous sea than I had ever before beheld got up as if by magic.

The ship, however, happily answered her helm and flew before the gale,
which at the same time kept freshening and shifting round to every point
of the compass.

All we could now do was to scud, and that every instant, as the wind and
sea increased, became more and more dangerous. To bring her to under
present circumstances was impossible--indeed, deprived of all means of
handing the sails, we were helpless; and by this time every one of them
was flying aloft in tattered streamers, adding not a little to the
impetuous rate at which the gale drove us onward.

The seas, each apparently overtopping the other, kept following up
astern, and before long one broke aboard us, deluging the decks and
sweeping everything before it.

"Hold on! hold on for your lives, my men!" shouted the captain as he saw
it coming.

Few needed the warning. When for a short time all was again clear we
looked round anxiously to ascertain that none of our shipmates had been
carried overboard. By next to a miracle all were safe. The carpenter
and his crew were called aft to secure the stern ports and to barricade
the poop with all the planks and shores they could employ, but to little
purpose. The huge dark-green seas, like vast mountains upheaved from
their base by some Titan's power, came following up after us, roaring
and hissing and curling over as if in eager haste to overwhelm us, their
crests one mass of boiling foam. As I stood aft I could not help
admiring the bold sweep of the curve they made from our rudder-post
upwards, as high it seemed as our mizen-top, the whole a bank of solid
water, with weight and force enough in it to send to the bottom the
stoutest line-of-battle-ship in the Navy. The taste we got occasionally
of their crests, as they now and then caught us up, was quite enough to
make me pray that we might not have the full flavour of their whole
body.

No one on board had thought all this time of the Chatham, and when at
length we did look out for her she was nowhere to be seen. It was
probable that she was in as bad a plight as ourselves, so that neither
of us could have rendered the other assistance. Hour after