eath-like pause that made the heart
stand still and forced the belief upon one that she could never right
herself again. Times out of number I searched the captain's face in the
hope of deriving some sort of encouragement from it; but I found none.
On the other hand, it was plain, from the glances he now and again threw
back along the vessel, and from the strained expression that was never
absent from his eyes, that he was as anxious as myself, and, since he
was more conversant with her capabilities, with perhaps greater reason.
Only the man at the wheel--a tall, gaunt individual, with bushy eyebrows
and the largest hands I have ever seen on a human being--seemed
undisturbed. Despite the fact that upon his handling of those frail
spokes depended the lives of twenty human creatures, he was as undaunted
by the war of the elements going on around him as if he were sitting by
the fireside, smoking his pipe, ashore.

For upward of half an hour I remained where the captain had placed me,
drenched by the spray, listening to the dull thud of the seas as they
broke upon the deck below, and watching with an interest that amounted
almost to a pain the streams of water that sluiced backward and forward
across the bridge every time she rolled. Then, summoning all my courage,
for I can assure you it was needed, I staggered toward the ladder and
once more prepared to make my way below. I had not reached the deck,
however, and fortunately my hands had not quitted the guide rails, when
a wave larger than any I had yet seen mounted the bulwark and dashed
aboard, carrying away a boat and twisting the davits, from which it had
been suspended a moment before, like pieces of bent wire. Had I
descended a moment earlier, nothing could have prevented me from being
washed overboard. With a feeling of devout thankfulness in my heart for
my escape, I remained where I was, clinging to the ladder long after the
sea had passed and disappeared through the scuppers. Then I descended
and, holding on to the rails as before, eventually reached the saloon
entrance in safety.

To be inside, in that still, warm atmosphere, out of the pressure of the
wind, was a relief beyond all telling, though what sort of object I must
have looked, with my hair blown in all directions by the wind and my
clothes soaked through and through by the spray that had dashed upon me
on the bridge, is more than I can say. Thinking it advisable I should
change as soon as possible, I