on the deck, and he became suddenly very
quiet, with a white face, breathing hard, and with a few drops of blood
trickling from his cut lip. On the lee side another man could be seen
stretched out as if stunned; only the washboard prevented him from going
over the side. It was the steward. We had to sling him up like a bale,
for he was paralysed with fright. He had rushed up out of the pantry
when he felt the ship go over, and had rolled down helplessly, clutching
a china mug. It was not broken. With difficulty we tore it away from
him, and when he saw it in our hands he was amazed. "Where did you get
that thing?" he kept on asking us in a trembling voice. His shirt was
blown to shreds; the ripped sleeves flapped like wings. Two men made him
fast, and, doubled over the rope that held him, he resembled a bundle of
wet rags. Mr. Baker crawled along the line of men, asking:--"Are you
all there?" and looking them over. Some blinked vacantly, others
shook convulsively; Wamibo's head hung over his breast; and in painful
attitudes, cut by lashings, exhausted with clutching, screwed up in
corners, they breathed heavily. Their lips twitched, and at every
sickening heave of the overturned ship they opened them wide as if to
shout. The cook, embracing a wooden stanchion, unconsciously repeated a
prayer. In every short interval of the fiendish noises around he could
be heard there, without cap or slippers, imploring in that storm the
Master of our lives not to lead him into temptation. Soon he also became
silent. In all that crowd of cold and hungry men, waiting wearily for
a violent death, not a voice was heard; they were mute, and in sombre
thoughtfulness listened to the horrible imprecations of the gale.

Hours passed. They were sheltered by the heavy inclination of the ship
from the wind that rushed in one long unbroken moan above their heads,
but cold rain showers fell at times into the uneasy calm of their
refuge. Under the torment of that new infliction a pair of shoulders
would writhe a little. Teeth chattered. The sky was clearing, and bright
sunshine gleamed over the ship. After every burst of battering seas,
vivid and fleeting rainbows arched over the drifting hull in the flick
of sprays. The gale was ending in a clear blow, which gleamed and cut
like a knife. Between two bearded shellbacks Charley, fastened with
somebody's long muffler to a deck ring-bolt, wept quietly, with rare
tears wrung out by bewilderment, cold, h