whether she wouldn't do better at running
before it. Well, we watched for a `smooth,' but it didn't seem to come;
and then, while we were still waiting, a sea came bearing down upon us
that looked as big as a mountain. The skipper sang out for all hands to
hold on for their lives, and some of us managed to get a grip, but
others didn't. Down it came upon us, looking like a wall that was
toppling over, and the next second it was aboard of us! I had took to
the mizzen rigging, and was about ten feet above the level of the rail
when that sea came aboard, and I tell you, sir--what I'm saying is the
petrified truth--for half a minute that barque was so completely buried
that there wasn't an inch of her hull to be seen, from stem to starn;
nothing but her three masts standing up out of a boiling smother of
foam. I made up my mind that the poor old hooker was done for, that
she'd never come up again. But she did, at last, with every inch of
bulwarks gone, fore and aft, the cook's galley swept away, every one of
our boats smashed, and five of the hands missing--one of them being the
chief mate.

"Well, as soon as she had cleared herself, the skipper sang out for the
carpenter to sound the well; and when Chips drew up the rod he reported
four feet of water in the hold! Of course all hands went at once to the
pumps; but by the time that we'd been working at them for an hour we
found it was no good, the water was gaining upon us hand over hand, and
the craft was settling down under our feet. So we knocked off pumping
and, our boats being all gone, went to work to put a raft together.
But, our decks having been swept clean of everything, we hadn't much
stuff left to work up, and it took us a couple of hours to knock
together the few odds and ends that you took us off of this morning. We
hadn't stuff to make anything bigger, and we hadn't the time, even if
we'd had the stuff, for by the time that we had finished our raft the
poor old hooker had settled so low in the water that we expected her to
sink under us any minute.

"Then we got to work to scrape together such provisions as we could lay
our hands on; but by this time the lazarette was flooded and not to be
got at, while everything in the steward's pantry was spoiled, the pantry
having been swamped by the sea that had broken aboard and done all the
mischief. But it was the grub from the pantry, or nothing; so we took
it--and there wasn't very much of it either--and