der water.

Presently, we had to reduce sail, brailing up the spanker and taking a
single reef in the topsails; but still keeping the topgallant-sails set
above them, a thing frequently done by a skipper who knows how to
"carry-on."

Then, as the wind still rose and as with less canvas the ship would go
all the better and not bend over or bury herself so much, the
topgallants were taken in. At length, when Mr Mackay and I quitted the
deck at midnight, the men were just beginning to clew up the main-sail,
the captain, who had come up from below with Mr Saunders when the
starboard watch relieved us, having ordered it to be furled and another
reef to be taken in the topsails, as it was then blowing great guns and
the ship staggering along through a storm-tossed sea, with the sky
overcast all round--a sign that we had not seen the worst of it yet!

The Silver Queen pitched so much--giving an occasional heavy roll to
starboard as her bows fell off from the battering of the waves, with her
stern lifting up out of the water, and rolling back quickly to port
again on her taking the helm as the men jammed it hard down--that I
found it all I could do to descend the poop ladder safely. I climbed
down gingerly, however, holding on to anything I could clutch until I
reached the deck-house, which was now nearly knee-deep in the water that
was sluicing fore and aft the ship with every pitch and dive she gave,
or washing in a body athwart the deck as she rolled, and dashing like a
wave against the bulwarks within.

I went to turn in to my bunk, which was on top of that occupied by Sam
Weeks, who, very luckily for him, had to turn out, going aft on duty
with the rest of the starboard watch; for, in my struggles to ascend to
the little narrow shelf that served me for a bed, and which from the
motion of the ship was almost perpendicular one moment and the next
horizontal, I would have pretty well trampled him to jelly, having to
stand on the lower bunk to reach the upper one assigned to me.

Ultimately, however, I managed to climb up to my perch and pulled my
blankets about me; and then I tried to sleep as well as the roaring of
the wind and rushing wash of the sea, in concert with the creaking of
the chain-plates and groaning of the ship's timbers and myriad voices of
the deep, would let me.

But, it was all in vain!

Hitherto, although I had been more than two days and two nights on board
and had sailed all the way from the do