ter and cast overboard. 'If we ran another hundred yards, we
were lost: there was no hope but to fetch around head-to-sea and ride
to it.'

"--Which, after some seven or eight sickening minutes, we did.
He was master, and Jarvis put down the helm and obeyed. Twice we
were heaved, tilted and slid sideways down, like folks perched on the
window-sills of a falling house. Then she came fair about and rode
to it, every crest flinging more or less of spray over us, hour after
hour. . . .

"But I must tell you one thing. From time to time we were roused up
in the darkness, to bale. Our work performed, we three passengers--
Santa and Farrell and I--would creep under the tarpauling anew, out
of the drumming rain, and coil there to sleep. . . . Ay, and once in
the pitch blackness under, she, mistaking, reached two arms around my
neck and with a long sigh, dead-beat, sank asleep. That was all.
. . . Farrell lay as he had tumbled, like a log across my ankles.
. . . I held her, crooked by my elbow against my side, her head
drowsed on my shoulder, her body pulsing against mine. I am telling
you all, and I tell you that I did not dare to kiss her. Lying
awake, with Farrell across my feet, I held her to me, feeling her
breathe.

"At hint of dawn Jarvis, who had been watching the seas the night
through, barked us out of cover. The rain had ceased, the gale had
swept southward as fast as it had come. The sea heaved almost as
steeply as ever, but the toppling waves no longer flung any spray
over us, or any to mention."

"Day broke, and the after-swell still tumbled us heavily: but nowhere
within the great ring of horizon did it heave one of the other boats
into sight. The sea smoothed itself down with a quite wonderful
rapidity, and still its great surface was a blank."

"I cannot somehow believe that so able a handler of his boat as I
knew Captain Macnaughten to be allowed himself to be swamped in that
gale. His orders had been to carry on and only heave-to upon signal.
Jarvis--who (as I have said) could sail our boat running by the feel
of her, maintained that we had never been in the worst of danger,
that the skipper could sail a boat for ten to his own one, that he
had just held on, in his straight way, upon the orders he had given,
and left us at the back of the horizon while we fenced seas under
Grimalson's orders.

"Since nothing apparently has been heard since of those other boats,
I shall go on hoping t