XX IN WHICH WE ARE IN DESPERATE CASE

"GOD walketh upon the sea as he walketh upon the land," said the
minister. "The sea is his and we are his. He will do what it liketh
him with his own." As he spoke he looked with a steadfast soul into the
black hollow of the wave that combed above us, threatening destruction.

The wave broke, and the boat still lived. Borne high upon the shoulder
of the next rolling hill, we looked north, south, east, and west, and
saw only a waste of livid, ever forming, ever breaking waves, a gray
sky streaked with darker gray shifting vapor, and a horizon impenetrably
veiled. Where we were in the great bay, in what direction we were being
driven, how near we might be to the open sea or to some fatal shore, we
knew not. What we did know was that both masts were gone, that we must
bail the boat without ceasing if we would keep it from swamping, that
the wind was doing an apparently impossible thing and rising higher and
higher, and that the waves which buffeted us from one to the other were
hourly swelling to a more monstrous bulk.

We had come into the wider waters at dawn, and still under canvas. An
hour later, off Point Comfort, a bare mast contented us; we had hardly
gotten the sail in when mast and all went overboard. That had been hours
ago.

A common peril is a mighty leveler of barriers. Scant time was there
in that boat to make distinction between friend and foe. As one man
we fought the element which would devour us. Each took his turn at
the bailing, each watched for the next great wave before which we must
cower, clinging with numbed hands to gunwale and thwart. We fared alike,
toiled alike, and suffered alike, only that the minister and I cared for
Mistress Percy, asking no help from the others.

The King's ward endured all without a murmur. She was cold, she was worn
with watching and terror, she was wounded; each moment Death raised his
arm to strike, but she sat there dauntless, and looked him in the face
with a smile upon her own. If, wearied out, we had given up the fight,
her look would have spurred us on to wrestle with our fate to the last
gasp. She sat between Sparrow and me, and as best we might we shielded
her from the drenching seas and the icy wind. Morning had shown me the
blood upon her sleeve, and I had cut away the cloth from the white arm,
and had washed the wound with wine and bound it up. If for my fee, I
should have liked to press my lips upon the blue-veine