manner in which she had been enveloped in her father's coat.

Then came madame's turn. It was impossible to so effectually enwrap her
as had been the case with the child, but I did the best I could with a
strip of the tarpaulin over her head and shoulders, well secured round
her body with a length of the main-topgallant brace, and then, lashing
her firmly to my own body, I took my place in the bosun's chair,
wrapping my arms tightly round my quaking companion, and then taking a
firm grip upon the lanyards of the chair. The next instant I was
whirled off the barque's taffrail, and found myself dangling close over
the seething white water between the two vessels. Then, while I was in
the very act of shouting a few encouraging words through the tarpaulin
to my companion, I heard the roaring crash of a heavy sea as it struck
and swept over the unfortunate barque from stem to stern, and the next
instant I felt the water envelop me and whirl and drag me hither and
thither with a strength that it seemed impossible to resist; then as
suddenly I found myself in the air again, with the great wave-crest
rushing and roaring away from me toward the ship, the topmast-heads only
of which were visible above the foaming ridge of water that had just
swept past me. In another second or two, however, the end of her
flying-jib-boom reared itself high above the seething wave-crest, her
sharp bows, smothered in spray, quickly followed, and then the entire
hull of the ship hung balanced for an instant upon the top of the wave
ere her bows dipped, revealing the full length of her deck crowded with
people, every one of them with their faces turned in my direction. A
few more jerks and swings, every one of which seemed imbued with a
devilish desire to unseat and hurl myself and my companion to
destruction, and we were hauled safely up on to the rail of the _City of
Cawnpore_--to an accompaniment of triumphant cheers from the
spectators--and quickly released.

Before I could recover breath to say a word, the bosun's chair was
swiftly sliding along the hawser, on its way back to the barque; and
presently, after some apparent delay and hesitation on the part of those
aboard the doomed vessel, it swung off her taffrail, on its return
journey, with a man seated in it. Swiftly the chair traversed about a
third of the distance between the two vessels, and then it was overtaken
by and deeply buried in the heart of an oncoming sea, even as I had
be