tly different,
the wind increasing tenfold in its intensity.

Where it had sung through the rigging it now shrieked and howled, as if
the air were peopled with demons, while the waves, lashed into fury,
dashed against our bows like battering rams, rising almost to the level
of our masthead where their towering crests met overhead.

Round came the old barquey's head slowly, and more slowly still as she
staggered against the heavy sea, until, all at once, she stopped in
stays, unable apparently, though struggling all she could, to face her
remorseless foe.

"Luff up, quartermaster!" roared the skipper to the top of his voice and
dancing up and down the bridge in his excitement. "Luff, you beggar,
luff!"

"I can't, sir," yelled the man in desperation--a fresh hand who had come
on duty to relieve Atkins at six bells. "The steam steering gear has
broken-down, sir, and I can't make her move."

"By Jingo, that's a bad job," cried the skipper, but he was not long at
a nonplus. "Run aft, Haldane, and you too, Spokeshave. Loosen the bunt
of the mizzen-trysail and haul at the clew. That'll bring her up to the
wind fast enough, if the sail only stands it!"

To hear was to obey, and both Spokeshave and I scuttled down the bridge-
ladder as quickly as we could and away along the waist of the ship aft,
the urgency of our errand hastening our movements if we had needed any
spur beyond the skipper's sharp, imperative mandate.

But, speedily as we had hurried, on mounting the poop-ladder and rushing
towards the bitts at the foot of the mizzenmast to cast off the bunt-
lines and clewlines of the trysail we found we had been already
forestalled by an earlier arrival on the scene of action.

This was Mr O'Neil, the second officer, whom I had left below asleep in
his cabin when I came up at two bells from the saloon, he having been on
duty all the afternoon and his services not being required again until
night, when he would have to go on the bridge to take the first watch
from eight to midnight.

Feeling the bucketing-about we were having in the trough of the sea when
we came about, and probably awakened by the change of motion, just as a
miller is supposed to be instantaneously roused by his mill stopping,
though he may be able to sleep through all the noise of its grinding
when at work, Garry O'Neil had at once shoved himself into his boots and
monkey jacket and rushed up on the poop through the companion and booby-
hatch