ed thing on ahead, in like travail of going, in
like groaning to the very soul, the bark of my life now lay in the
welter, helpless, reft of storm and strife, blind, counseled by no
fixed ray ahead. I know not what purpose remained in me, that, like
the ship which bore us, I still, dumbly and without conscious
purpose, forged onward to some point fixed by reason or desire before
reason and desire had been engulfed by this final unkindness of the
world. For myself, I cared little or none at all. The plunge of the
boat, the shriek of the wind, the wild magic and mystery of it, would
have comported not ill with a strong man's tastes even in hours more
happy, and now, especially, they jumped with the wild protest of a
soul eager for some outlet of action or excitement. But for these
others, these women--this woman--these boys, all brought into this
danger by my own mad folly, ah! when the thought of these arose, a
swift remorse caught me; and though for myself I feared not at all,
for these I feared.

Needs must, therefore, use every cool skilled resource that lay at
hand. No time now for broken hearts to ask attention, the ship must be
sailed. Crippled or not, what she had of help for us must be got out
of her, used, fostered, nourished. All the art of the navigator must
be charged with this duty. We must win through. And, as many a man who
has seen danger will testify, the great need brought to us all a great
calm and a steady precision in that which needed doing.

I saw Peterson at the wheel, wet to the skin, as now and again a
seventh wave, slow, portentous, deadly-deliberate, showed ahead of us,
advanced, reared and pounded down on us with its tons of might. But he
only shook the brine from his eyes and held her up, waiting for the
slow pulse of our crippled engine to come on.

"Can't keep my pipe lit!" he called to me, as I stood beside him; and
at last, Peterson, in a real time of danger, seemed altogether happy
and altogether free of apprehension beyond that regarding his pipe.

At the first breaking of the storm I had, of course, ordered all ports
closed, and had sent both my young companions to the ladies' cabin
aft, as the driest part of the boat. Even there, the water that
sometimes fell upon our decks as the great waves broke, poured aft and
even broke about the cabin, drenching everything above deck. It was
man's work that was to be done now, yet none could bear a hand in it
save the engineer and the steer