y off. Grief studied the
barometer, still steadily falling.

"The centre is to the southward," he told Snow, "and we're running
across its path and into it. Now we'll turn about and run the other way.
That ought to bring the glass up. Take in the foresail--it's more than
she can carry already--and stand by to wear her around."

The maneuver was accomplished, and through the gloom that was almost
that of the first darkness of evening the _Uncle Toby_ turned and raced
madly north across the face of the storm.

"It's nip and tuck," Grief confided to the mate a couple of hours
later. "The storm's swinging a big curve--there's no calculating that
curve--and we may win across or the centre may catch us. Thank the Lord,
the glass is holding its own. It all depends on how big the curve is.
The sea's too big for us to keep on. Heave her to! She'll keep working
along out anyway."

"I thought I knew what wind was," Snow shouted in his owner's ear next
morning. "This isn't wind. It's something unthinkable. It's impossible.
It must reach ninety or a hundred miles an hour in the gusts. That don't
mean anything. How could I ever tell it to anybody? I couldn't. And look
at that sea! I've run my Easting down, but I never saw anything like
that."

Day had come, and the sun should have been up an hour, yet the best
it could produce was a sombre semi-twilight. The ocean was a stately
procession of moving mountains. A third of a mile across yawned the
valleys between the great waves. Their long slopes, shielded somewhat
from the full fury of the wind, were broken by systems of smaller
whitecapping waves, but from the high crests of the big waves themselves
the wind tore the whitecaps in the forming. This spume drove masthead
high, and higher, horizontally, above the surface of the sea.

"We're through the worst," was Grief's judgment. "The glass is coming
along all the time. The sea will get bigger as the wind eases down. I'm
going to turn in. Watch for shifts in the wind. They'll be sure to come.
Call me at eight bells."

By mid-afternoon, in a huge sea, with the wind after its last shift no
more than a stiff breeze, the Tongan bosun sighted a schooner bottom
up. The _Uncle Toby's_ drift took them across the bow and they could
not make out the name; but before night they picked up with a small,
round-bottom, double-ender boat, swamped but with white lettering
visible on its bow. Through the binoculars, Gray made out: _Emily L No.