ot move one inch forward from
her position. He was prepared for a certain stability on the part of
the Jasper B., but not for quite so much of it.

With the next gust the storm was on them in earnest. This blast came
with zigzag flashes of lightning that showed the heavens riotous with
battalions of charging clouds; it came with deafening thunder and a
torrential discharge of rain. One would have thought the power of the
wind sufficient to set a steel battleship scudding before it like a
wooden shoe. And yet the extraordinary Jasper B., although she
shrieked and groaned and seemed to stagger with the force of the blow,
did not move either forward or sidewise.

She flinched, but she stood her ground.

Second by second the storm increased in fury; in a moment it was no
longer merely a storm, it was a tempest. Cleggett, alarmed for the
safety of his masts, now ordered his men to take in sail.

But even as he gave the order he realized that it could no longer be
done. A cloudburst, a hurricane, an electrical bombardment, struck the
Jasper B. all at once. One could not hear one's own voice. In the
glare of the lightning Cleggett saw the rigging tossing in an
indescribable confusion of canvas, spars, and ropes. Both masts and
the bowsprit snapped at almost the same instant. The whole chaotic
mass was lifted; it writhed in the air a moment, and then it came
crashing down, partly on the deck and partly in the seething waters of
the canal, where it lay and whipped ship and water with lashing
tentacles of wreckage.

But still the unusual Jasper B. had not moved from her position.

Cleggett's men had had warning enough to save themselves. They
gathered around him to wait for orders. More than one of them cast
anxious glances towards the land. Shouting to them to attack the
debris with axes, and setting the example himself, Cleggett soon saw
the deck clear again, and the Jasper B., to all intents, the same hulk
she had been when he bought her. But such was the fury of the tempest
that even with the big kites gone the Jasper B. continued to shake and
quiver where she lay. Speech was almost impossible on deck, but Cap'n
Abernethy signed to Cleggett that he had something important to say to
him.

The whole company adjourned to the cabin, and there, shouting to make
himself heard, the Cap'n cried out:

"Her timbers have been strained something terrible, Mr. Cleggett. She
ain't what I would call safe and seawort