oam.

By this time captain and first mate were up. The Wanderer lay without
headway, though bobbing slowly as a slight whiff of air stirred the
flattened mainsail.

"Meet her! Meet her, Mr. Duff!" shouted Gary, instantly realizing the
coming peril.

The men were tumbling from the tops, Ralph among the last, for though
ordered down by the considerate mate, he returned with the others when
the topsails were to be stowed.

Duff and two old hands were at the wheel; others were lashing loose
articles, when with a scream and a screech, the squall was upon them.

At that season and on that coast, these sudden commotions are
especially treacherous and full of peril. Coming, as it were from
nowhere, either on the heels of fog or calm, their advent is doubly
dreaded by the unwary mariner. When the blast struck the schooner,
over she heeled, and in a trice the lee scuppers were seething with
brine. Each man clung to something for life, as the deck sloped like a
house roof.

"Ease her! Ease her!" roared the captain from the main weather
bobstays. "For your lives, men! Shove her nose up in the wind."

The scud, as it struck the port bow, flew like shot across the deck.
So acute was the shriek of the wind, even shouted orders could hardly
be heard.

The Wanderer, trembling like a living thing, slowly--at first almost
imperceptibly--rose from the blows hammering at her sides like thunder.
There was a long moment of intense, even agonizing suspense, then she
began to forge ahead, buffeted, battered, heeling dizzily still to
leeward, yet--saved, for the time being at least.

"That was a close call, captain," remarked Duff as the two stood
together five minutes later, clinging to the weather shrouds.

"I should say so. Who first heard the thing coming?"

"Young Granger, I believe. There's good stuff in that lad, I make bold
to say."

These words shouted into Gary's ear, for the squall was still at its
height, caused a deep scowl to settle on the captain's brow. He turned
away without a word.

"Gary doesn't like that boy for some reason," was the mate's inward
comment. "I wonder why?"

After twenty minutes of wind so furious that the sea was fairly
flattened, the squall ceased almost as suddenly as it had begun, before
the great ocean billows had time to rise. But in that short interval a
jib had been blown into ribbons and the foresail torn loose from its
treble reefing points. A great rent was made by it