The coxswain, who had all his work cut out to keep the boat from being
swamped by the heavy following seas that came rolling up astern of us,
threatening every minute to engulf the cutter and carry her down bodily
below, gave an uneasy squint in the direction whither the young officer
pointed his finger.

"Lord-sakes, sir," he exclaimed, shaking his head in a very grave way,
"that be a h'ox-eye!"

"Ox-eye!" Mr Chisholm repeated after him in a quizzing tone, with a
grin on his face. "I've heard of ox-tongues before--those tinned ones
ain't bad eating sometimes for lunch on a pinch; but an ox-eye--what is
that, Draper?"

"Nothin' to larf about," grunted out our crusty coxswain, bracing his
body against the loom of the oar with which he was steering and slewing
the boat's head aside to avoid a cross sea that nearly broke at that
very moment over our bows. "If ye'd be'n as long on this coast as me,
sir, ye'd know when ye seed one o' them things up there--it means, `Look
out!' Ay, by the Lord too, we must look out now! Stand by there--all
hands lie down in the bottom of the boat; it's yer only chance, if ye
values yer lives!"

"Down, men!" Mr Chisholm cried, endorsing Draper's words of warning
with his command. "Do as the coxswain tells you--down for your lives!"

Our chaps who were seated on the thwarts forwards and amidships at once
scrambled down on the bottom boards, while we in the sternsheets,
including Mr Chisholm himself, squatted on the grating, only old Draper
sitting up still at his post aft with both hands holding the loom of the
steering oar in a firm grip.

"Bend yer heads," muttered this worthy the next moment; "it's a-comin'
now!"

As the words passed his lips and we all bowed down below the level of
the gunwale, the roar of the sea seemed hushed in the dead stillness
that ensued; and then, with a wild shriek that sounded like the moaning
of some lost soul from the bottomless pit, the wind, which had been
gathering up all its strength in the interim, burst upon us, burying the
cutter's bows as it struck her right under water.

Bouncer, frightened out of his life, made a movement to rise as he lay
alongside me on the stern grating; but old Draper gave him a kick in the
ribs with the toe of his heavy boot.

"Lie still, you beggar!" he cried, bringing, with a tremendous pull of
his arms, the oar-rudder hard over. "The boat's rightin' all right.
We've seed the wust on it if yer'll only bide