iting
until the typhoon was over; but my friend grinned in an annoying,
superior kind of way and said he doubted whether the wind would blow
more than half a gale. He was right there--but it was the last half.
Anyhow he swung her round and she heeled away over in an alarming
fashion, and we headed right into the center of the vortex. He gave me
the end of a rope to hold and told me to swing on to it, which I was
very glad to do, because there are times and places when it gives you a
slight sense of comfort to have anything at all to hold to, even if it
is only a rope. On and on we careened madly. I was so occupied with
harkening to the howl of the mad winds in the rigging and watching the
mad waves that, when he suddenly called out something which sounded like
Hard Ah Lee, I paid no attention. If his fancy led him in a moment of
dire peril like this to be yelling for somebody with a name like a
Chinese laundryman, it was no concern of mine.

Then he bellowed: "Leggo that sheet!"

Now I knew there was something about a sailboat called a sheet, but I
naturally assumed it was the sail. I leave it to any disinterested
person if a sail, being white and more or less square in shape, doesn't
look more like a sheet than a mere rope does. So, as I wasn't near the
sail, but was merely holding on to my rope, I started to tell him I
wasn't touching his blamed old sheet. But the words were never spoken.

The boat tried to shy out from under me and came very nearly succeeding.
At the same time, she buckjumped and stood right up on one edge, like a
demented gravy dish. At the same moment, also, a considerable portion of
the Atlantic Ocean came aboard and lit in my lap, and something struck
me alongside the head with frightful force; and something else scraped
me off the place where I was sitting and hurled me headlong.

When I came to, the man who owned the boat was scrambling round,
stepping on me and my clothes, and grabbing at loose ends, and swearing;
but as soon as he had a moment to spare from these other duties he
called me a derned idiot! I was his guest, mind you, and he used that
language toward me.

"You derned idiot!" he said. "Didn't you see she was about to jibe?"

I told him in a dignified manner that I certainly did not; that had I
known she was about to jibe I would most certainly have jobe with her;
that personally I preferred any amount of jibbing, however painful, to
being drowned first and then beaten to dea