ergy. It then marked 3.20 in the morning.
We had wedged Bastin, who was now snoring comfortably, into his berth,
with pillows, and managed to tie a cord over him--no, it was a large
bath towel, fixing one end of it to the little rack over his bed and
the other to its framework. As for ourselves, we lay down on the floor
between the table legs, which, of course, were screwed, and the settee,
protecting ourselves as best we were able by help of the cushions, etc.,
between two of which we thrust the terrified Tommy who had been sliding
up and down the cabin floor. Thus we remained, expecting death every
moment till the light of day, a very dim light, struggling through a
port-hole of which the iron cover had somehow been wrenched off. Or
perhaps it was never shut, I do not remember.

About this time there came a lull in the hellish, howling hurricane; the
fact being, I suppose, that we had reached the centre of the cyclone. I
suggested that we should try to go on deck and see what was happening.
So we started, only to find the entrance to the companion so faithfully
secured that we could not by any means get out. We knocked and shouted,
but no one answered. My belief is that at this time everyone on the
yacht except ourselves had been washed away and drowned.

Then we returned to the saloon, which, except for a little water
trickling about the floor, was marvelously dry, and, being hungry,
retrieved some bits of food and biscuit from its corners and ate. At
this moment the cyclone began to blow again worse than ever, but it
seemed to us, from another direction, and before it sped our poor
derelict barque. It blew all day till for my part I grew utterly weary
and even longed for the inevitable end. If my views were not quite those
of Bastin, certainly they were not those of Bickley. I had believed from
my youth up that the individuality of man, the ego, so to speak, does
not die when life goes out of his poor body, and this faith did not
desert me then. Therefore, I wished to have it over and learn what there
might be upon the other side.

We could not speak much because of the howling of the wind, but Bickley
did manage to shout to me something to the effect that his partners
would, in his opinion, make an end of their great practice within
two years, which, he added, was a pity. I nodded my head, not caring
twopence what happened to Bickley's partners or their business, or to my
own property, or to anything else. When d