then doing the
same by the fore.

By the time that I had cast off the fore topsail halyards, Gurney and
Saunders, alarmed by my cry, were out on deck, while in the doorway of
the cabin stood Grace Hartley with a wrap of some sort thrown over her
shoulders.

"What is it, Mr Troubridge--what, in the name of all that is terrible,
is happening?" demanded Gurney, gazing about him in amazement.

"Man the reef tackles, for your lives!" I shouted. "Don't you hear the
squall thundering down upon us? If we are not lively it will whip the
masts out of her--indeed I am not sure but it will in any case! Here we
are; lay hold, and drag--Grace, go back to your cabin--this is no place
for you!"

Gurney sprang to one of the reef tackles, while Saunders and I dragged
at the other, yelling our "Yo ho's!" as we did so. Meanwhile the awful
booming and crashing sounds seemed to be sweeping down toward us on the
wings of the squall, and so heavy had they by this time become that we
could actually feel the ship trembling with the reverberation of them.
The next second that frightful combination of rumbling and crashing
sounds was all about us, mingled now with the hoarse roar of heavily
breaking water; the ship suddenly began to pitch and roll with a
violence which deprived us of all power to do anything more than just
cling for our lives to the nearest object that we could lay hold of; the
sea all about us suddenly broke into a mad turmoil of raging waters,
white with the glare of phosphorescence, leaping, foaming, and swirling
hither and thither with appalling violence; huge masses of water flung
themselves high in the air and crashed in over our bulwarks, forward,
aft, and amidships, all at the same moment, deluging our decks and
threatening to sweep us overboard; and in the midst of it all we felt a
succession of violent shocks, as though the ship were being swept over a
reef by a violent tide race. But there was no wind; not a breath, save
such slight baffling draughts as were probably created by the violent
motion of the sea around us.

Those grating, hammering shocks lasted perhaps half a minute, then they
suddenly ceased; the deep rumbling, crashing sound swept past us away
down to the southward, and gradually died away; the roar of broken water
changed its note and became the seething hiss of an innumerable
multitude of streams rushing over a rocky bed and cascading from one
level to the other; and the ship once more floa