with
the breath of doom!

As the tornado struck the _Mayflower,_ the vessel went over on her beam
ends as though a giant hand had seized her by the keel and were trying
to roll her over. The water came up over the lee rail almost to the
hatches. The great lateen sail was flat on the sea like a sheet. Then as
the vessel righted partly, down again, and again!

All this was the work of an instant. The first tremendous blast of the
hurricane had caught the sail full, and about capsized the boat. But
_tio_ Batiste and the Rector scrambled along the almost perpendicular
deck to the mast, loosened the peak-halyards and let the yard down.
Freed from the pressure of the sail, the _Mayflower_ came back to an
even keel with the next wave. But Pascualo had had to let go the tiller,
and the boat was wallowing in the trough, spinning round and round like
a top in the boiling waters. The Rector was crawling back to the helm,
with the idea of putting the _Mayflower's_ head to the wind. She would
not come round, however. The heavy net now held her fast by the stern,
though a moment before it had kept the vessel from foundering by acting
as a counter to the violent pulling of the sail.

The skipper looked around for his running mate. She came booming down
the wind, dismasted, her sail overboard, her stern to the blow. She had
cut loose from the net to keep from going over and was being tossed to
leeward by the gale. The waves piled up behind her steep as walls, the
tops blowing off every one of them and crashing down on her decks in a
deafening roar. But she had done well, all the same. The _Mayflower,_
too, must get free from the seine, and try to make Valencia. A knife was
laid to the cable. It snapped at the next pitch of the vessel, which,
with the tiller hard down, came round into the wind. The sail had
slipped down to the deck, the cross-boom sticking within easy reach of
the hand. But that bit of canvas caught the hurricane with tremendous
force, bending the mast threateningly and giving considerable headway to
the _Mayflower_, which was taking every comber over forward.

In that critical extremity the Rector became his real self again. "All
hands, attention! Obey orders, and be quick about it. We've got to come
about!" That was the supreme moment. If one of those water-mountains
caught her abeam, it would all be over in a second. Pascualo, upright,
his feet glued to the deck, had his eyes on the waves ahead, studying
every co