hen a terrific shock hurled me
violently against the cabin bulkhead, and the next instant a deafening
medley of sounds, compounded chiefly of the crash of breaking spars, the
wild yells of Cunningham and Murdock, the seething smash of a perfect
mountain of water on the deck, the splintering of the glass in the cabin
skylight and the pouring of a deluge of water down into the cabin, smote
upon my ears.

Partially stunned by the violence with which I had been dashed against
the bulkhead, I made no immediate effort to rise, but remained passively
where I had fallen, stupidly striving to realise what had happened,
until a tremendous upheaval of the schooner's hull, by which she was
hove completely over on her beam-ends, and a rush of water that
half-filled my cabin awoke me to the consciousness that a catastrophe of
some sort had overtaken us, and I scrambled awkwardly and with
difficulty to my feet, pulling myself up by means of the knobs of the
drawers under my standing bedplace, when another furious shock again
upset me, and I fell squatting into the water violently surging to and
fro athwart my cabin. By this time, however, full consciousness of the
serious character of the situation had come to me, and as the schooner
was again hove up and almost on to her opposite beam-ends, I let go my
hold of the drawer-knobs and went swirling out through my stateroom
door, lifted fairly off my feet by the rush of water, and found myself
swimming for my life in the main cabin, in the midst of a squadron of
cushions that had floated or been flung off the top of the cabin
lockers. Then another mountainous sea swooped down upon and overwhelmed
the hapless schooner, another deluge poured into her cabin through the
smashed skylight and the companion, and had not a backwash of water just
then swept me into the companion way and stranded me on the ladder, so
that I could grasp the handrail, I should certainly have been drowned,
for that second downpour filled the cabin to the level of the beams.

As I pulled myself up and secured a footing on the companion ladder I
felt the hull of schooner again soaring aloft, up, up, until it seemed
to my excited imagination as though the little craft was being hove
right up among the clouds and at the same time being capsized. Then
came the thundering crash of another mountain of water upon her deck,
accompanied by the sound of rending woodwork as the companion cover
parted company and was swept awa