e, and
the screaming of the wind, but the orders were given, and from habit
and the custom of their calling they knew what they must be.

They hauled a jib down, backed the fore-staysail, and got the
boom-foresail sheeted in, but they let the rent mainsail bang, for it
could do no more damage than it had already done. Then a man sprang up
on the rail with a blue light in his hand, and as the weird radiance
flared in a long streak to leeward a cry rose from the water. In
another few moments a blurred object, half hidden in flying spray,
drove down upon the schooner furiously on the top of a sea, and then
there was sudden darkness as the man flung down the flare.

Another harsh and half-heard cry rose out of the obscurity. An
indistinguishable object plunged past the schooner's stern, there was a
crash to leeward as she rolled, and a man standing up in the boat
clutched her rail. He was swung out of it as she rolled back again,
but he crawled on to the rail with a rope in one hand, and after
jamming it fast round something sprang down with the hooks of the
lifting tackles which one of the rest had given him. Then, while two
more men scrambled up, there was a clatter of blocks, but a shattered
sea struck the boat as they hove her dear, and when she swung in the
brine poured out through the rents in her. Dampier waved an arm as
they dropped her on the deck, and they heard him faintly.

"Boys," he said, "you have got to cut that mainsail down."

They did it somehow, hanging on to the mast-hoops, buffeted and now and
then enveloped by the madly flogging canvas, floundering below amidst a
raffle of fallen gear, while the bitter spray lashed them, and the
broken boom held up by the clew ring banged savagely to and fro. After
that they trimmed her fore-staysail over, and there was by contrast a
curious quietness as Dampier jammed his helm up, and the schooner swung
off before the sea. Then somebody lighted a lantern, and Charly
stooped over Wyllard, who lay limp and still beside the wheel. His
face showed grey in the feeble light, save where a broad red stain had
spread across it. Dampier cast a glance at him.

"Get him below, and into his bunk, two of you," he said.

They did it with difficulty, for the _Selache_ lurched viciously each
time a white-topped sea came up upon her quarter, and as soon as it
seemed advisable to leave the deck Dampier went down. Wyllard lay in
his bunk, with his eyes half-open, but th