ai, poised lightly,
like a bird on the verge of flight, merely rested one hand on the rail.
He gave no orders. As I divined, there was nothing to be done. He
waited--that was all--in tranquillity and repose. The situation was
simple. Either the masts would go, or the _Elsinore_ would rise with her
masts intact, or she would never rise again.

In the meantime she lay dead, her lee yardarms almost touching the sea,
the sea creaming solidly to her hatch-combings across the buried, unseen
rail.

The minutes were as centuries, until the bow paid off and the _Elsinore_,
turned tail before it, righted to an even keel. Immediately this was
accomplished Captain West had her brought back upon the wind. And
immediately, thereupon, the big foresail went adrift from its gaskets.
The shock, or succession of shocks, to the ship, from the tremendous
buffeting that followed, was fearful. It seemed she was being racked to
pieces. Master and mate were side by side when this happened, and the
expressions on their faces typified them. In neither face was
apprehension. Mr. Pike's face bore a sour sneer for the worthless
sailors who had botched the job. Captain West's face was serenely
considerative.

Still, nothing was to be done, could be done; and for five minutes the
_Elsinore_ was shaken as in the maw of some gigantic monster, until the
last shreds of the great piece of canvas had been torn away.

"Our foresail has departed for Africa," Miss West laughed in my ear.

She is like her father, unaware of fear.

"And now we may as well go below and be comfortable," she said five
minutes later. "The worst is over. It will only be blow, blow, blow,
and a big sea making."

* * * * *

All day it blew. And the big sea that arose made the _Elsinore's_
conduct almost unlivable. My only comfort was achieved by taking to my
bunk and wedging myself with pillows buttressed against the bunk's sides
by empty soap-boxes which Wada arranged. Mr. Pike, clinging to my door-
casing while his legs sprawled adrift in a succession of terrific rolls,
paused to tell me that it was a new one on him in the pampero line. It
was all wrong from the first. It had not come on right. It had no
reason to be.

He paused a little longer, and, in a casual way, that under the
circumstances was ridiculously transparent, exposed what was at ferment
in his mind.

First of all he was absurd enough to ask if Possum showed symptoms of sea-
sickness.