re
it as she had previously done--strangely enough causing her to retrace
the very same course she had just passed over, in almost a straight
line!

"Square away the yards!" shouted out Captain Miles, while the men at the
wheel shifted the helm to prevent the vessel from broaching-to; and, in
another moment we were pitching and tossing through the choppy head-sea
which we had now to meet, the ship rolling from side to side, and
tumbling about like a whale in its death flurry, as she raced on ahead
again before the stiff north-western blast.

"Well!" exclaimed Captain Miles presently, "of all the sudden changes of
wind I ever encountered on the ocean, this beats everything! It has
literally jumped round the compass."

"I fancy it is the tail-end of the hurricane," said Mr Marline. "It is
a very lucky thing we wore ship in time."

"Lucky, you call it?" rejoined Captain Miles gravely, eyeing the
foremast anxiously the while, fearful of anything being carried away,
when we would be left to the mercy of the cruel waves. "Man alive, it
is only through the mercy of Providence that we are not now sunk fathoms
deep below the sea!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

ON OUR BEAM-ENDS.

Up to now, although we had experienced bad weather for two days and the
special gale before which we were driving had lasted some eighteen hours
at a stretch, no serious accident had happened on board, the _Josephine_
being as sound and staunch in every way as when she left port, with the
exception of losing her mainsail and having her rigging, perhaps, rather
tautly stretched.

The galley fire had been put out once or twice by the heavy seas which
we took in over the bows, but Cuffee, with the cordial co-operation of
his brother darkey, Jake, was easily able to light this again; and the
men, having their rations regularly and little or no work to do--save
taking their trick at the wheel, when four would have to go on duty
together at once--had nothing to grumble at. Everything, indeed,
proceeded comfortably enough while the ship was scudding first one way
and then the other--"doing diagonals," as it were, across her latitudes!

Down below in the cabin all had been what sailor's term "a hurrah's
nest" ever since the gale began, the loose water knocking about the
decks having washed all sorts of odds and ends together and kept us
always wet; while the rolling of the vessel from side to side, like a
pendulum, as she ran before the wind had smashe