in soldierly fashion, his pockets full
of cold beef and crackers, and his canteen (for every infantry officer
learns to carry one) charged with hot coffee. He was pretty wet, inasmuch
as the spray showered incessantly athwart ships, while every few minutes
heavy seas came over the quarter bulwarks, slamming upon the deck like the
tail of a shark in his agonies. During the morning several great combers
had surmounted the port bow and rushed aft, carrying along everything
loose or that could be loosened, and banging against the companion door
with the force of a runaway horse. And these deluges grew more frequent,
for the gale was steadily increasing in violence, howling and shrieking
out of the gilded eastern horizon as if Lucifer and his angels had been
hurled anew from heaven.

About noon the close-reefed foretopsail burst open from earing to earing,
and then ripped up to the yard, the corners stretching out before the wind
and cracking like musket shots. To set it again was impossible; the orders
came, "Down yard--haul out reef tackle;" then half a dozen men laid out on
the spar and began furling. Scarcely was this terrible job well under way
when a whack of the slatting sail struck a Kanaka boy from his hold, and
he was carried to leeward by the gale as if he had been a bag of old
clothes, dropping forty feet from the side into the face of a monstrous
billow. He swam for a moment, but the next wave combed over him and he
disappeared. Then he was seen further astern, still swimming and with his
face toward the brig; then another vast breaker rushed upon him with a
lion-like roar, and he was gone. Nothing could be done; no boat might live
in such a sea; it would have been perilous to change course. The captain
glanced at the unfortunate, clenched his fists desperately, and turned to
his rigging. Another man took the vacant place on the yard, and the hard,
dizzy, frightful labor there went on unflaggingly, with the usual cries of
"Haul out, knot away," etc. It was one of the forms of a sailor's funeral.

No time for comments or emotions; the gale filled every mind every minute.
It was soon found that the spanker, a pretty large sail, well aft and not
balanced by any canvas at the bow, drew too heavily on the stern and made
steering almost impossible. A couple of Kanakas were ordered to reef it,
but could do nothing with it; the skipper cursed them for "sojers" (our
infantryman smiling at the epithet) and sent two first-c