mber carefully as it swept toward the vessel. He was looking for
a smooth one among those driving ridges of water--some pocket in the
gale, which would enable him to swing around without turning turtle.

"Now, now, now ... ah ... ah ... ah!"

The _Mayflower_ veered like a shot, sank into a great yawning chasm
between two smooth but almost perpendicular walls, and she had her stern
to windward just as the next huge breaker came, lifting the whole vessel
aft, shoving her nose under forward, and tossing her to leeward as with
a mighty punch in the back. Trembling, staggering, she broke free. The
crew, catching their breath from the terror of the moment, looked out
after the great green mountain as it passed on. They saw it curve in a
somber arch of emerald over the other craft, dismantled, that was
drifting helpless before the storm. The enormous comber broke, like a
mine exploding, with cataracts of foam, and water thrown on high in
columns. And when the giant, literally blown to pieces by the gale, had
disappeared, to be followed by other billows just as noisy and just as
high, the surface of the sea was bare, save for a piece of timber and a
barrel with the head gone.

"_Requiescat in pace!_" _tio Batiste_ murmured crossing himself and
lowering his head. Tonet and the two sailors, pale and haggard, answered
instinctively: "_Amen!_"

"_Pare! Pare!_" Pascualet was calling in terror, pointing toward the
bow. The other "cat," his comrade, had been there when the _Mayflower_
started to plunge. Now he was gone! The great Destroyer had swept him
overboard, and no one had seen! Panic seized on the crew, in that
ghastly moment of supreme peril. The deafening thunder claps followed
one on the heels of the other. Chain-lightning hissed and snapped close
by in all directions over the leaden sky, snakes of fire that seemed to
be darting into the water to quench their flaming entrails; and the
bangs of thunder came, some of them short, crackling like the roll of
musketry; others deep, prolonged, booming. The rain was coming down in a
torrential cascade, as though the sky were trying to fill up the valleys
in the sea and make its power more violent.

But the Rector took the crew in hand. "God, have we sailors or women
aboard here? And you came from the Cabanal, and are afraid of a bit of
sea! You'd think you fellows had never been offshore! This isn't going
to last. These easterlies are always freakish things! But anyhow! What's