or the little Frenchman was totally ignorant of the coast;
he continued to hand the main-sheet; and O'More, who all night long
had been sitting in silence against the cabin bulkhead, leaped
manfully upon the forecastle and stood by the tackle there. We had
now to put the boat upon the other tack, for the tide made it
impossible to run before the wind. O'More belayed his sheet, and,
as the cutter lay down again, folded his arms and leaned back on the
weather-bulwark, balancing himself with his feet against the skylight.

The jabble around us was like the seething of a caldron; for the waves
boiled up all at once, and ran in all directions. I was distracted by
their universal assault, and did not observe the heaviest and most
formidable of all, till it was almost down upon our broadside. I put
the helm hard down, and shouted with all my might to O'More--"Stand by
for a sea, sir--lay hold, lay hold." It was too late. I could just
prevent our being swamped by withdrawing our quarter from the shock,
when it struck us on the weather-bows, where he stood: it did not
break. Our hull was too small an obstacle: it swept over the
forecastle as the stream leaps a pebble, stove in the bulwark, lifted
him right up, and launched him on his back, with his feet against the
foresail. The foresail stood the shock a moment, and he grappled to
it, while we were swept on in the rush, like a sparrow in the clutches
of a hawk; but the weight of water bore all before it--the sheets were
torn from the deck, the sail flapped up above the water, and I saw him
tossed from its edge over the lee-bow. The mainsail hid him for a
moment; he reappeared, sweeping astern at the rate of fifteen knots an
hour. He was striking out, and crying for a rope; there was no rope
at hand, and all the loose spars had been stowed away. He could not be
saved. I have said that the sun had just risen: between us and the
east his rays shone through the tops of the higher waves with a pale
and livid light; as O'More drifted into these, his whole agonised
figure rose for a moment dusk in the transparent water, then
disappeared in the hollow beyond; but at our next plunge I saw him
heaved up again, struggling dim amid the green gloom of an
overwhelming sea. An agonising cry behind me made me turn my head. "O
save him, save him! turn the boat, and save him! O William, as you
love me, save my father!" It was Madeline, frantic for grief,
stumbling over, and unconsciously treadin