and, even if there had been, the men in their drunken state would have
refused to listen to Philip's orders or expostulations. "He," they
said, "was no sailor, and was not to teach them how to steer the ship"
The gale was now at its height. The rain had ceased, but the wind had
increased, and it roared as it urged on the vessel, which, steered so
wide by the drunken sailors, shipped seas over each gunnel; but the
men laughed and joined the chorus of their songs to the howling of the
gale.

Schriften, the pilot, appeared to be the leader of the ship's company.
With the can of liquor in his hand, he danced and sang, snapped his
fingers, and, like a demon, peered with his one eye upon Philip; and
then would he fall and roll with screams of laughter in the scuppers.
More liquor was handed up as fast as it was called for. Oaths,
shrieks, laughter, were mingled together; the men at the helm lashed
it amidships, and hastened to join their companions, and the _Ter
Schilling_ flew before the gale; the fore-staysail being the only
sail set, checking her as she yawed to starboard or to port. Philip
remained on deck by the poop-ladder. "Strange," thought he, "that I
should stand here, the only one left now capable of acting,--that
I should be fated to look by myself upon this scene of horror and
disgust--should here wait the severing of this vessel's timbers,--the
loss of life which must accompany it,--the only one calm and
collected, or aware of what must soon take place. God forgive me, but
I appear, useless and impotent as I am, to stand here like the master
of the storm,--separated as it were from my brother mortals by my
own peculiar destiny. It must be so. This wreck then must not be for
me,--I feel that it is not,--that I have a charmed life, or rather a
protracted one, to fulfil the oath I registered in heaven. But the
wind is not so loud, surely the water is not so rough: my forebodings
may be wrong, and all may yet be saved. Heaven grant it! For how
melancholy, how lamentable is it, to behold men created in God's own
image, leaving the world, disgraced below the brute creation!"

Philip was right in supposing that the wind was not so strong, nor
the sea so high. The vessel, after running to the southward till past
Table Bay, had, by the alteration made in her course, entered into
False Bay, where, to a certain degree, she was sheltered from the
violence of the winds and waves. But, although the water was smoother,
the w