as to anchor. Fortunately, the foresight of Gardiner had
everything ready for this indispensable precaution. Without anchoring, ten
minutes would probably have carried the schooner directly down upon the
breakers, leaving no hope for the life of any on board her, and breaking
her up into chips. Both bowers were let go at once, and long ranges of
cable given. The schooner was snubbed without parting anything, and was
immediately brought head to sea. This relieved her at once, and there was
a moment that her people fancied she might ride out the gale where she
was, could they only get clear of the wreck. Axes, hatchets, and knives
were freely used, and Roswell Gardiner saw the mass of spars and rigging
float clear of him with a delight he did not desire to conceal. As it
drove to leeward, he actually cheered. A lead was instantly dropped
alongside, in order to ascertain whether the anchors held. This infallible
test, however, gave the melancholy certainty that the schooner was still
drifting her length in rather less than two minutes.

The only hope now was that the flukes of the anchors might catch in better
holding ground than they had yet met with. The bottom was hard sand,
however, which never gives a craft the chance that it gets from mud. By
Roswell Gardiner's calculations, an hour, at the most, would carry them
into the breakers; possibly less time. The Sea Lion, of Holmes' Hole, was
to windward a cable's length when this accident happened to her consort,
and about half a mile to the southward. Just at that instant the breakers
trended seaward, ahead of that schooner, rendering it indispensable for
her to ware. This was done bringing her head to the southward, and she now
came struggling directly on towards her consort. The operation of waring
had caused her to lose ground enough to bring her to leeward of the
anchored craft, and nearer to the danger.

Roswell Gardiner stood on his own quarter-deck, anxiously watching the
drift of the other schooner, as she drew near in her laboured way,
struggling ahead through billows that were almost as white as the breakers
that menaced them with destruction to leeward. The anchored vessel,
though drifting, had so slow a movement that it served to mark the steady
and rapid set of its consort towards its certain fate. At first, it seemed
to Gardiner that Daggett would pass just ahead of him, and he trembled for
his cables, which occasionally appeared above water, stretched like b