oud crash followed. Away went the
main-topmast, and yard, and struggling sail, carrying six human beings
with it. Five were hurled off into the now foaming sea. We saw them
for an instant stretching out their arms, as if imploring that help
which it was beyond our power to give. The ship dashed onward, leaving
them far astern. One still clung to the rigging towing with the spar
alongside. The ship still lay almost on her beam-ends.

O'Carroll saw the possibility of saving the poor fellow. Calling out to
me to lay hold of a rope, one end of which he fastened round his waist,
he plunged overboard. I could scarcely have held it, had not William
and Trundle with Kelson come to my assistance. O'Carroll grasped the
man. "Haul away!" he shouted. In another instant he was on board
again, with the man in his arms. The helm was put up, the ship righted,
the man had got off the foreyard, and away the ship new, with the
fore-topsail wildly bulging out right before the wind. In a few minutes
it was blown from the bolt-ropes in strips, twisted and knotted
together. The mainsail, not without difficulty, was handed, and we
continued to run on under the foresail, the only other sail which
remained entire, and it seemed very probable that that would soon be
blown away.

All this time the terror of the unfortunate passengers was very great--
the more so that it was undefined. They saw the captain, however, every
now and then come into the cabin and toss off a tumbler of strong
rum-and-water, and then return on deck, and shout out with oaths often
contradictory orders. The gale all this time was increasing, until it
threatened to become as violent as the hurricane from which we had
escaped. I could not help wishing that we had not left our leaky little
schooner. We might have reached some land in her. Now we did not know
where we were going, except towards a region of rocks and sandbanks on
which any moment the ship might be hurled. For ourselves it would be
bad enough; but hard indeed for the poor women and children, of whom
there were a dozen or more on board, several of them helpless infants.

As I looked on the man who was thus perilling the lives of his
fellow-creatures by his senseless brutality, I could not help thinking
what a load of guilt rested on his head. His face was flushed, his
features distorted, his eyes rolling wildly, as he walked with irregular
steps up and down the deck, or ever and anon descend