ight an unknown friend passed down to him a
bottle of whisky. The cork was in the bottle, and as he was holding
on to the rigging with one hand and had the other round the lady,
there was some difficulty in getting at the contents of the bottle.
This he finally solved by knocking the neck off, and then found
himself in the dilemma of not being able to get the bottle to the
lady's mouth.

"You are pouring it down my neck," was her quiet response to his first
essay. In the end he succeeded in aiming the whisky in the right
direction, and after taking some himself, passed it on, feeling much
refreshed.

Just before a terrible accident occurred, which threatened death to
one or both. The purser, who had fixed himself in the rigging some
yards above them, getting numbed, loosed his hold, and falling headlong
struck against the lady and bounded off into the sea. But Herrmann kept
his hold, and the shock was scarcely noticed. On such a night all the
obligations were not, as Herrmann gratefully acknowledges, on the one
side; for when one of his feet got numbed, his companion, following his
direction, stamped on it till circulation was restored.

From their perilous post, with waves occasionally dashing up and
blinding them with spray, they saw some terrible scenes below. A man
tied to the mast nearer the deck had his head cut off by the waves,
as Herrmann says, though probably a rope or a loose spar was the agent.
Not far off, a little boy had his leg broken in the same manner. They
could hear and see one of the nuns shrieking through the skylight, and
when she was silenced the cry was taken up by a woman wailing from
the wheelhouse,--

"My child is drowned, my little one, Adam!"

At daylight a sailor, running nimbly down the rigging, reached the poop,
and, bending over, attempted to seize some of the half-drowned people
who were floating about. Once he caught a little child by the clothes;
but before he could secure it a wave carried it out of his grasp, and
its shrieks were hushed in the roar of the waters. At nine o'clock, on
the second morning of the wreck the tide had so far ebbed that the deck
was clear, and, coming down from the rigging, the battered and shivering
survivors began to think of getting breakfast. A provident sailor had,
whilst it was possible, taken up aloft a couple of loaves of black
bread, a ham, and some cheese. These were now brought out and fairly
distributed.

An hour and a half later all per