and together they slaved until it
seemed as if their backs surely would break.

The storm, while not abating any, did not appear to increase in fury.
It was severe enough as it was. The seas loomed above the broken craft
like huge, black mountains, yet somehow they seemed to break just a
few seconds before engulfing her and to divide, passing on either
side, but the "Sister Sue" wallowed in a smother of foam, creaking and
groaning, giving in every joint, and threatening to fall to pieces
with each new twist and turn forced upon her by the writhing seas.

Miss Elting, after having in a measure quieted the girls in the cabin,
came out clinging to a rope. She and Harriet held a shouted
conversation, after which the guardian returned to the cabin, where
there was less danger of being beaten down by huge seas, although one
could get fully as wet inside the cabin as on deck.

The hours of the night wore slowly away. The intense impenetrable
blackness, the roar and thunder of the sea, the terrible jerking,
jolting and hurling beneath them, shook the nerves of the girls,
keeping them constantly in a half-dazed condition that perhaps
lessened the keenness of their suffering. Harriet and Jane, however,
never for a single second relaxed their vigilance, or left a single
thing undone that would tend to ease the boat or to contribute to its
safety. The binnacle light long since had been extinguished by the
water, making it impossible to see the compass to tell which way they
were headed. Little good it would have done them to know, either, they
being powerless to change their course, or to make any headway at all,
save as they drifted with the seas. Harriet hoped they might be
drifting toward shore. Instead, they were being slowly carried down
the coast and parallel with it.

At last the gray of the early dawn appeared in the east, but it was a
"high dawn," with the light first appearing high in the sky, meaning
to sailors wind or storm. Harriet did not know the meaning of it,
however, though she thought it a most peculiar looking sky. And now,
as the light came slowly, they were able to get an idea what the sea
in which they had been wallowing all night looked like. It was a
fearsome sight. As they gazed their hearts sank within them. Mountains
of leaden water rose into the air, then sank out of sight again, and
when the "Sue" went into one of those troughs of the sea it was like
sinking into a great black pit from which there