d scarcely
time to recover our hearing before we became conscious of a hissing
roaring sound in the atmosphere, momentarily increasing in intensity,
and, looking to windward, there appeared in startling relief against the
sable background a long line of luminous milky foam rushing down toward
us from the horizon. In an incredibly short time the squall was upon
us. On it came, like a howling fiend, over the tortured surface of the
ocean, causing it to hiss and seethe like the contents of a boiling
cauldron, and striking the cutter with such resistless fury that she
went over helplessly before it, burying her lee-rail so deeply in the
brine that her sails lay prostrate upon the surface of the water.

Each of us instinctively shouted to the others to "hold on," grasping at
the same moment whatever came nearest. I managed somehow to clamber up
the deck, as the cutter went over, and, passing out over the low
bulwarks, established myself on the upturned side of the little craft.
Giaccomo had done the same, while Francois was standing on the side of
the cabin-companion, and clinging convulsively with both hands to the
weather-rail.

Crawling up to the side of the Corsican, I placed my mouth to his ear
and shouted,--

"Do you think you can cut away the mast?"

"No! no! no!" he earnestly returned. "See, signor, her head is paying-
off, and she will come up again in a minute or two; she _cannot_ turn
over altogether, her ballast is too well secured for that, and she will
not fill even if she remains thus for half an hour yet; no water can get
below except through the companion, and the doors fit so well that very
little will get down even through them. See there, she is coming up
again already."

It was even so. While the man was speaking, the cutter's bows had been
rapidly paying-off, until we headed, as nearly as we could guess,
straight for the shore; when, the pressure of the wind being no longer
upon her broadside, the heavy ballast had gradually dragged the yacht
into an upright position, and we had, somewhat precipitately, to
scramble inboard again.

The moment that the yacht recovered herself, the wind of course caught
her sails, and away we at once started to leeward with the speed of a
hunted stag. This, however, would never do; the shore was straight
ahead, and, at the rate at which we were travelling, twenty minutes
would have seen us dashed into matchwood upon the rocks.

Very cautiously, therefore, w