nd rushing aft as if he
were suddenly possessed, Jorrocks roared out at the pitch of his voice--
the words ringing like a trumpet note through the ship--

"Breakers ahead on the weather bow! Hard up with the helm--hard!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

PAT DOOLAN "CARRIES ON."

Jorrocks's cry to put the helm up was instantly obeyed by the man at the
wheel, who jammed it hard-a-port with all his strength. The hands
belonging to the watch on duty, at the same time, knowing with the
aptitude of seamen what this order necessitated, rushed to the lee
braces, easing them off without any further word of command, while those
on the weather side were hauled in, thus squaring the yards and getting
the ship round before the wind, when she ran off to the north-westwards,
on a course almost at right angles to her former direction--which was on
a bowline, with the sou'-south-east wind nearly on her beam.

"Hoot mon, what d'ye mean?" shouted Mr Macdougall, when he had
recovered from the surprise which the unexpected order of the boatswain,
so rapidly carried out, had caused. "Are ye gone clean daft?"

But Jorrocks had no need to explain the reason for his interference with
the mate's duties.

As the vessel payed off, the sound of surf, loudly thundering against
some rocky rampart projecting from the deep which opposed the onward
roll of the ocean billows, was heard louder and louder; and, in another
instant, Mr Macdougall and those who stood beside him on the poop held
their breath with awe as the _Esmeralda_ glided by a triangular-shaped
black peak that seemed as high as the foretopsail yard--so closely that
they could apparently have touched it by merely stretching out their
hands, while over it the waves, driven by the south wind, were breaking
in columns of spray, flakes of which fell on the faces of all aft, as
they looked over the side, and trembled at the narrowly-avoided danger.

"Whee-ew!" whistled Jorrocks through his teeth. "That were a squeak,
an' no mistake!"

It was.

We had been saved by a miracle.

Five minutes, nay, half a minute longer on our previous course, and the
_Esmeralda_ would, with the way she had on her, have been dashed to
pieces on the jagged teeth of these isolated rocks standing in mid-
ocean, when never a soul on board would have lived to tell the tale of
her destruction; for, in the pale phosphorescent light emitted by the
broken water surrounding the crag, some of the sailors averred, as we