a rushing
behind him.

"Let go the fore-sheet," he shouted, "and hold on for your lives."

The wave--a billow broken to atoms, yet still retaining all its weight
and motive force--overwhelmed the boat and passed on. Before she had
quite recovered, another sea of equal size engulfed her, and as she had
been turned broadside on by the first, the second caught her in its
embrace and carried her like the wind bodily to leeward. Her immense
breadth of beam prevented an upset, and she was finally launched into
shallower water, where the sand had only a few feet of sea above it.
She had been swept away full quarter of a mile in little more than a
minute! Here the surf was like a boiling caldron, but there was not
depth enough to admit of heavy seas.

The same sea that swept away the boat carried the fore and main masts of
the Wellington by the board, and extinguished all her lights.

The boat drove quite two miles to leeward before the tug got hold of her
again. To have returned to the wreck against wind and tide alone, we
need scarcely repeat, would have been impossible, but with the aid of
the tug she was soon towed to her old position and again cast loose.

Once more she rushed into the fight and succeeded in dropping anchor a
considerable distance to windward of the wreck, from which point she
veered down under her lee, but so great was the mass of broken masts,
spars, and wreckage--nothing being now left but parts of the mizzen and
bowsprit--that the coxswain was obliged to pay out 117 fathoms of cable
to keep clear of it all.

The difficulty and danger of getting the boat alongside now became
apparent to the people on the wreck, many of whom had never dreamed of
such impediments before, and their hopes sank unreasonably low, just as,
before, they had been raised unduly high.

With great difficulty the boat got near to the port quarter of the ship,
and Pike stood up ready in the bow with a line, to which was attached a
loaded cane, something like a large life-preserver.

"Heave!" shouted the coxswain.

The bowman made a deliberate and splendid cast; the weighted cane fell
on the deck of the ship, and was caught by Jim Welton, who attached a
hawser to it. This was drawn into the boat, and in a few seconds she
was alongside. But she was now in great danger! The wild waters that
heaved, surged, and leaped under the vessel's lee threatened to dash the
boat in pieces against her every moment, and it was only b