conviction of not being utterly destroyed returned to him through the
sensations of being half-drowned, bestially shaken, and partly choked.

It seemed to him he remained there precariously alone with the stanchion
for a long, long time. The rain poured on him, flowed, drove in sheets.
He breathed in gasps; and sometimes the water he swallowed was fresh and
sometimes it was salt. For the most part he kept his eyes shut tight, as
if suspecting his sight might be destroyed in the immense flurry of
the elements. When he ventured to blink hastily, he derived some moral
support from the green gleam of the starboard light shining feebly upon
the flight of rain and sprays. He was actually looking at it when its
ray fell upon the uprearing sea which put it out. He saw the head of the
wave topple over, adding the mite of its crash to the tremendous uproar
raging around him, and almost at the same instant the stanchion was
wrenched away from his embracing arms. After a crushing thump on his
back he found himself suddenly afloat and borne upwards. His first
irresistible notion was that the whole China Sea had climbed on the
bridge. Then, more sanely, he concluded himself gone overboard. All the
time he was being tossed, flung, and rolled in great volumes of water,
he kept on repeating mentally, with the utmost precipitation, the words:
"My God! My God! My God! My God!"

All at once, in a revolt of misery and despair, he formed the crazy
resolution to get out of that. And he began to thresh about with his
arms and legs. But as soon as he commenced his wretched struggles he
discovered that he had become somehow mixed up with a face, an oilskin
coat, somebody's boots. He clawed ferociously all these things in
turn, lost them, found them again, lost them once more, and finally was
himself caught in the firm clasp of a pair of stout arms. He returned
the embrace closely round a thick solid body. He had found his captain.