ran the wheel hard-over and kept anxious track of the changing
direction of the wind on his face and of the heave of the vessel. This
was the crucial moment. In performing the evolution she would have to
pass broadside to the surge before she could get before it. The wind was
blowing directly on his right cheek, when he felt the _Sophie
Sutherland_ lean over and begin to rise toward the sky--up--up--an
infinite distance! Would she clear the crest of the gigantic wave?

Again by the feel of it, for he could see nothing, he knew that a wall
of water was rearing and curving far above him along the whole weather
side. There was an instant's calm as the liquid wall intervened and shut
off the wind. The schooner righted, and for that instant seemed at
perfect rest. Then she rolled to meet the descending rush.

Chris shouted to the captain to hold tight, and prepared himself for the
shock. But the man did not live who could face it. An ocean of water
smote Chris's back and his clutch on the spokes was loosened as if it
were a baby's. Stunned, powerless, like a straw on the face of a
torrent, he was swept onward he knew not whither. Missing the corner of
the cabin, he was dashed forward along the poop runway a hundred feet or
more, striking violently against the foot of the foremast. A second
wave, crushing inboard, hurled him back the way he had come, and left
him half-drowned where the poop steps should have been.

Bruised and bleeding, dimly conscious, he felt for the rail and dragged
himself to his feet. Unless something could be done, he knew the last
moment had come. As he faced the poop, the wind drove into his mouth
with suffocating force. This brought him back to his senses with a
start. The wind was blowing from dead aft! The schooner was out of the
trough and before it! But the send of the sea was bound to breach her to
again. Crawling up the runway, he managed to get to the wheel just in
time to prevent this. The binnacle light was still burning. They were
safe!

That is, he and the schooner were safe. As to the welfare of his three
companions he could not say. Nor did he dare leave the wheel in order to
find out, for it took every second of his undivided attention to keep
the vessel to her course. The least fraction of carelessness and the
heave of the sea under the quarter was liable to thrust her into the
trough. So, a boy of one hundred and forty pounds, he clung to his
herculean task of guiding the two hundr