tenant waved his hand and came aft, wet to the skin, and his
clothes streaming with water as though he had been overboard--as indeed
he had, to all intents and purposes; for while standing on the
forecastle, waiting for the order to let go the anchor, he had been
quite as much under water as above it.

"That is as narrow a squeak as I have ever beheld, sir," he exclaimed,
as he joined the skipper. "If it had not been for that half-board that
we involuntarily made, we should never have done it."

"No," agreed the skipper; "I believe that not even the undertow would
have saved us. However, `all's well that ends well,' so we will first
take the mainsail off her, Mr Howard, and then you may splice the
main-brace and call the watch. Let her go along clean full,
quartermaster; there is nothing to leeward now that we need be afraid
of. How's her head?"

"Nor'-nor'-west, sir," answered the quartermaster.

The clewing-up and stowing of the mainsail, without allowing it to
thresh itself to ribbons, was a task of no little difficulty,
considering the violence with which the gale was still blowing; but our
first luff was seaman enough to accomplish it without mishap. No sooner
was it off the ship than she once more resumed her former buoyancy of
motion, lifting easily over the seas, with only an occasional sprinkling
of spray upon the forecastle, instead of ploughing furiously through
them and drowning the whole of the fore-deck, as she had been doing
during her endeavour to work out to windward of Point du Raz; so great,
indeed, was the improvement in our condition generally that, although it
was still blowing very heavily, we all felt as though we had suddenly
passed into fine weather after our recent buffeting.

Some three-quarters of an hour later we passed Les Stevenets. I believe
we might have weathered them had we really made a serious effort to do
so, but there was no need. In this case, unlike that of Point du Raz,
we had the option of going to leeward if we chose, and the skipper _did_
choose. He had evidently had enough of close shaves for one day, and
the moment he recognised that we should have another if he made the
attempt to weather that group of rocks, he ordered the helm to be put
up, and we passed to leeward of them, giving them a good wide berth. We
had no stomach for again viewing surf-washed rocks at such close
quarters as we had been fated to do that day.

By the time that we were well clear of