heir backs turned to him,
and were nearly hidden by the gunwale.

Suddenly there broke over the bows, where Bernt sat, a tremendous wave
whose white crest Elias had long seen through the darkness. It seemed to
stop the whole boat for an instant, the timbers quivered and shook under
its weight, and when the boat, which for a few seconds lay
half-capsized, righted herself and went on her way again, it streamed
out astern. While this was happening, he fancied there were ghastly
cries in the other boat. But when it was over, his wife, who sat at the
halliard, said in a voice that cut him to the heart: "Good God! Elias,
that wave took Martha and Nils with it!"--these were their youngest
children, the former nine, the latter seven years old, who had been
sitting in the bow, near Bernt. To this Elias only answered: "Don't let
go the rope, Karen, or you will lose more!"

It was now necessary to take in the fourth reef, and, when that was
done, Elias found that the fifth ought to be taken in too, for the storm
was increasing; yet in order to sail the boat free of the
ever-increasing seas he dared not, on the other hand, take in more sail
than was absolutely necessary. But the little sail they could carry
became gradually less and less. The spray dashed in their faces, and
Bernt and his next youngest brother Anton, who till now had helped his
mother with the halliard, were at last obliged to hold the yard, an
expedient resorted to when the boat cannot even bear to go with the last
reef--in this case the fifth.

The companion boat, which had in the meantime vanished, now suddenly
appeared again beside them with exactly the same amount of sail as
Elias's boat; and he began rather to dislike the look of the crew on
board of her. The two men who stood there holding the yard, whose pale
faces he could distinguish under the sou'westers, seemed to him, in the
curious light from the breaking foam, more like corpses than living
beings, and apparently they did not speak a word.

A little to windward he saw once more the high white crest of another
huge wave coming through the dark, and he prepared for it in time. The
boat was laid with her stem in a slanting direction to it, and with as
much sail as she could carry, in order to give her sufficient speed to
cleave it and sail right through it. In it rushed with the roar of a
waterfall; again the boat half heeled over, and when the wave was past
his wife no longer sat at the halliard, an