Steward," he added in a louder key,
"come, look alive here and git the cuddy to rights in shipshape fashion!
By the powers, but the skipper'd be in a foine rage if he saw it all
mops and brooms like this! Bear a hand, man, and be smart, and I'll
send the carpenter to help you as soon as the watch is relayed." With
these words he bustled on deck again, after changing his oilskin, which
was all knocked to pieces, for a rough pea-jacket, and saying to Mr
Meldrum that he thought the latter would be more handy, for it was
blowing enough to take one's hair off!

"Papa," said Kate as soon as the mate had ascended the companion, "what
was that Mr McCarthy was saying when he spoke so low to you?"

"Eh, my dear?" answered her father a little confusedly, with some
hesitation in his voice. "Oh, only that the storm was raging violently
and did not seem to lull at all yet."

"Did he say that there was any danger?"

"Danger, eh? no, I--I can't say. I think I'll just step up and see for
myself;" and, anxious to escape this cross-examination, as well as
really to judge whether the position of the ship was as precarious as
the chief mate had indicated, Mr Meldrum likewise went up on to the
poop, finding some trouble when he reached the top of the companion
stairs, in opening the hatch.

For a moment, after emerging on to the deck, all was terribly dark--as
black as ink, as Mr McCarthy had said; but, the next instant, the whole
awful scene was lit up by the most intense and vivid flash of lightning
Mr Meldrum had ever beheld--the electric fluid being quite
unaccompanied by any peal of thunder, although that might have been
drowned by the continuous roar and shriek of the howling wind which
appeared to have gone mad with the unbridled fury of a demon.

During the brief space of time in which the zigazag stream of fire from
the vault of heaven momentarily lit up the surroundings of the ship,
which it did with a brightness that eclipsed the light of day, Mr
Meldrum could see the vessel tumbling about amid a chaotic mass of
waves, which it was no exaggeration to term mountains high, as if she
were in the vortex of a whirlpool; while dense opaque black clouds
hovered over her, vomiting forth wind, apparently from every quarter of
the horizon, the gusts tearing at the ship with harpy-like clutches, as
if they would rend her to pieces--she, like a poor human thing racked
with pain, labouring and groaning, and bending this way and tha