The captain turned his aged face forward and wavered pitifully. The
waist of the ship was full of water to the bulwarks. He had just come
through it, and knew death lurked every inch of the way.

"Go!" Chris shouted, fiercely. And as the fear-stricken man started,
"And take another look for the cook!"

Two hours later, almost dead from suffering, the captain returned. He
had obeyed orders. The sailing-master was helpless, although safe in a
bunk; the cook was gone. Chris sent the captain below to the cabin to
change his clothes.

After interminable hours of toil, day broke cold and gray. Chris looked
about him. The _Sophie Sutherland_ was racing before the typhoon
like a thing possessed. There was no rain, but the wind whipped the
spray of the sea mast-high, obscuring everything except in the immediate
neighborhood.

Two waves only could Chris see at a time--the one before and the one
behind. So small and insignificant the schooner seemed on the long
Pacific roll! Rushing up a maddening mountain, she would poise like a
cockle-shell on the giddy summit, breathless and rolling, leap outward
and down into the yawning chasm beneath, and bury herself in the smother
of foam at the bottom. Then the recovery, another mountain, another
sickening upward rush, another poise, and the downward crash. Abreast of
him, to starboard, like a ghost of the storm, Chris saw the cook dashing
apace with the schooner. Evidently, when washed overboard, he had
grasped and become entangled in a trailing halyard.