lass hands to
replace them; but these also were completely beaten by the hurricane. It
was not till a whole watch was put at the job that the big, bellying sheet
could be hauled in and made fast in the reef knots. The brig now had not a
rag out but her spencer and reduced spanker, both strong, small, and low
sails, eased a good deal by their slant, shielded by the elevated
port-rail, and thus likely to hold. But it was not sailing; it was simply
lying to. The vessel rose and fell on the monstrous waves, but made
scarcely more headway than would a tub, and drifted fast toward the still
unseen California coast.

All might still have gone well had the northwester continued as it was.
But about noon this tempest, which already seemed as furious as it could
possibly be, suddenly increased to an absolute hurricane, the wind fairly
shoving the brig sidelong over the water. Bang went the spanker, and then
bang the spencer, both sails at once flying out to leeward in streamers,
and flapping to tatters before the men could spring on the booms to secure
them. The destruction was almost as instant and complete as if it had been
effected by the broadside of a seventy-four fired at short range.

"Bend on the new spencer," shouted the captain. "Out with it and up with
it before she rolls the sticks out of her."

But the rolling commenced instantly, giving the sailors no time for their
work. No longer steadied by the wind, the vessel was entirely at the mercy
of the sea, and went twice on her beam ends for every billow, first to lee
and then to windward. Presently a great, white, hissing comber rose above
her larboard bulwark, hung there for a moment as if gloating on its prey,
and fell with the force of an avalanche, shaking every spar and timber
into an ague, deluging the main deck breast high, and swashing knee-deep
over the quarter-deck. The galley, with the cook in it, was torn from its
lashings and slung overboard as if it had been a hencoop. The companion
doors were stove in as if by a battering ram, and the cabin was flooded in
an instant with two feet of water, slopping and lapping among the baggage,
and stealing under the doors of the staterooms. The sailors in the waist
only saved themselves by rushing into the rigging during the moment in
which the breaker hung suspended.

Nothing could be done; the vessel must lift herself from this state of
submergence; and so she did, slowly and tremulously, like a sick man
rising fro