y. They had enough to do to keep
themselves afloat.

The gale showed no signs of moderating, and that night, as Salve
Kristiansen and another were taking their turn at the wheel, there
gleamed suddenly out of the pitchy darkness to leeward of the
fore-rigging the white crest of a tremendous eddy wave, which a moment
after came crashing down upon the deck, carrying clean away the
round-house, binnacle, and long-boat, damaging the wheel, and leaving
many of the drenched and half--suffocated sailors deposited in the most
unexpected places, and only glad to find that they still had the deck
under them.

"Ugly sea on the lee-bow!" was heard again from forward, and all in that
direction seemed suddenly to have become a mass of white.

"Ready about!--hard a-lee!" and with a great lurch the old craft went
about once more, the renewed shrieking in every kind of pitch in the
rigging, and the blinding dash of spray, showing to what a hurricane the
gale had risen.

Salve had been too much occupied with the damaged wheel at first to have
a thought to spare for anything else; but it recurred to him very soon
that when that first dark sea had broken over them so unexpectedly from
leeward, he had seen for a moment the glimmer of two lights on its
crest, and a world of associations was at once aroused in his mind: it
seemed to the lad's romantic fancy that he was keeping an appointment
with Elizabeth Raklev. As he glanced hurriedly back, the two light-dots
again appeared. He had seen them too often before to be mistaken, and he
shouted over his shoulder to the captain, who noticed them now for the
first time, "Those lights behind to leeward are from old Jacob's hearth
on Torungen!"

"Are you sure of that?" muttered Beck, coming nearer to him at the same
time over the sloping deck with the help of a rope. "If they are, it
will not be long before we are dashed to atoms on the rocks."

A conversation ensued between them, in which Salve declared that he had
known the water under Torungen from childhood as well as he did his
father's garden; and the upshot was that Beck, pale and hesitating,
determined to go in under land with him as pilot.

"It is much that is being intrusted this night to two young shoulders,"
said he; "and see you think twice, young man, both for your own life's
sake and ours."

They kept away then, and stood in under land with the least sail they
could carry in the tremendous sea that was now breaking in their