hted enough for a moment to let him get
on the deck and rush forward to slack up the fore-sheet, bawling
meanwhile through the darkness to the mate to keep her head up, as he
himself tore and tugged at the rope.

The schooner, evidently well off the wind, yet with all her sheets
hauled tight and clewed down, was literally flying ahead, but trying
to dive right through the ponderous seas, instead of skimming over and
laughing at them, as the captain well knew she ought to do. There
wasn't a second to lose pondering the problem as to why she would not
come up and save herself. Difficult and dangerous as it was in the
pitch dark with the deck slippery with ice, and the dizzy angle at
which it stood, the only certain way to save the situation was to let
go that sheet. Frantically he struggled with the rope, firmly clinched
though it was round its cleats with the ice that had made upon it.
Knowing how sensitive the vessel was and that she would answer to a
half-spoke turn of the wheel, and utterly at a loss to understand her
present stubbornness, he still kept calling to the helmsman, "Hard
down! Hard down!"--only to receive again the growling answer, "Hard
down it is. She's been hard down this long time."

It was all no good. Up, up came the weather rail under the terrific
pressure of the wind. The fore-sheet was now already well under water,
cleat and all, and the captain had just time to dash for the bulwark
and hold on for dear life, when over went the stout little craft,
sails, masts, and rigging, all disappearing beneath the waves. It
seemed as if a minute more and she must surely vanish altogether, and
all hands be lost almost within sight of their own homes.

Tumultuous thoughts flooded the captain's mind as for one second he
clung to the rail. Vain regrets were followed like lightning by a
momentary resignation to fate. In the minds of most men hope would
undoubtedly have perished right there. But Captain Bourne was made of
better stuff. "Nil desperandum" is the Englishman's soul; and soon he
found himself crawling carefully hand over hand towards the after end
of the vessel. Suddenly in the darkness he bumped into something soft
and warm lying out on the quarter. It proved to be his passenger,
resigned and mute, with no suggestion to offer and no spirit to do
more than lie and perish miserably.

Still climbing along he could not help marking the absence of the mate
and the boy from the rail, which standing out