e bothered to send down his top hamper every time it pipes up a
bit of a breeze? No; `Let it stand if 'twill,' is the word, `and if
'twon't, let it blow away.' But the chap is a real good seaman, Harry,
no man'll deny that; look how snug he's got everything; and all hauled
taut and coiled down neat and reg'lar man-o'-war fashion I'll be bound."

We got, I think, a clearer idea of the tremendous strength of the gale
by watching the brig than we did even by the motions of our own little
craft. She was tossed about like the merest cockle-shell, and every
time that she rose upon the crest of a sea, the wind took her rag of a
staysail, distending it as though it would tear it clean out of the
bolt-ropes, and heeling the vessel over until we could see the whole of
her bottom nearly down to her keel; and then her sharp bows would cleave
the wave-crest in a perfect cataract of foam and spray, and away she
would settle down once more with a heavy weather-roll into the trough.

"Well," exclaimed Bob, as we lost sight of her in the driving scud,
"she's a pretty sea-boat, is yon brig; but I'm blest if the little
_Lily_ don't beat her even at that game. What say you, Harry; ain't she
proving true the very words I spoke that night when we first began to
talk about this here v'yage?"

"Indeed she is, Bob," I answered; "I am as surprised as I am delighted
at her behaviour; I could never have believed, without seeing it myself,
that so small a craft would even live in such weather, much less be as
comfortable as she is. But I don't like _that_" continued I, as the
comb of a tremendous sea came curling in over our bows, fairly
smothering the little craft in foam for a moment, though she came up
immediately afterwards, "shaking her feathers" like a duck. "I'm afraid
one of these gentlemen will be starting our skylight or companion for
us; and that would be a very serious matter."

"Never fear," returned Bob confidently. "Our bit of a windlass and the
mast breaks the force of it before it reaches the skylight. And that
idee of yours in having it rounded at the fore end is a capital one; it
turns the water off each side almost like the stem of a ship, besides
bein' stronger than a square-shaped consarn. At the same time, all this
water coming in on deck don't do no _good_ if it don't do no _harm_; but
how's it to be pervented?"

"I have an idea," said I, "and it's worth a trial. It can do no harm,
and if it fails we are no wor