m'st was in a weakened
condition, but not as rotten as punk, and I supposed my foregaff was
as solid a piece of timber as ever went into a vessel.

"But listen!" as Elsa started to speak. "That isn't all. The flapping
canvas, with part of the gaff, pounded around like the devil let loose
for the ten seconds before we couldn't loosen the halyards and lower
away the wreckage, but in that time it had parted the mainstay in two
like a woman snipping a thread.

"Mind that, Elsa, a steel mainstay an inch thick. I never heard of one
parting in my life before. Things were happening so fast that I
couldn't keep track of them, and now, just at the crucial minute, the
old _May_ jibed, fell off from the wind, and went into the trough of
the sea. A great wave came then, ripped her rudder off (I found this
as soon as I tried to use the wheel) and swept the decks, taking one
man.

"Meanwhile the mainmast, with one stay gone, was whipping from side to
side like a great, loose stick. I put the wheel in the becket and in
one jump released the mains'l throat-halyards, while another fellow
released the peak. The sail came down on the run in the lazy jacks and
the men jumped on it and began to crowd it into some kind of a furl.

"I jumped back to the wheel and tried to bring her up into the wind,
but I might as well have tried to steer an ocean liner with a
sculling sweep. Not only was her rudder gone, but the tiller ropes
were parted on each side. It was damaged beyond repair!

"Once I read in school the funny poem of an American named Holmes. It
was called the 'One Hoss Shay,' and it told about an old chaise that,
after a hundred years of service, suddenly went to pieces all at the
same time and the same place. Even, in that time of danger, the memory
of the 'One Hoss Shay' came to me, and I thought that the _May
Schofield_ was doing exactly the same thing, although only half as
old."

"And then what happened?" asked Elsa, who had sat breathless through
Code's narrative.

"There's not much more to tell," he said, with an involuntary shudder.
"It was too much for the old girl with that load in her. She began to
wallow and drive toward the Wolves that I had caught a glimpse of
through the scud. She hadn't got halfway there when the mainmast came
down (bringing nearly everything with it) and hung over the starboard
quarter, dragging the vessel down like a stoat hanging to a duck's
leg.

"After that it was easy to see she was doome