occasionally heard faintly upon the wind, and which now seemed on the
point of foundering. The crew had climbed into the after-rigging, which
was all that now remained standing, and they made despairing signs for
help; but it was impossible to render any. They had enough to do to keep
themselves afloat.

The gale showed no signs of moderating, and that night, as Salvé
Kristiansen and another were taking their turn at the wheel, there
gleamed suddenly out of the pitchy darkness to leeward of the
fore-rigging the white crest of a tremendous eddy wave, which a moment
after came crashing down upon the deck, carrying clean away the
round-house, binnacle, and long-boat, damaging the wheel, and leaving
many of the drenched and half--suffocated sailors deposited in the most
unexpected places, and only glad to find that they still had the deck
under them.

"Ugly sea on the lee-bow!" was heard again from forward, and all in that
direction seemed suddenly to have become a mass of white.

"Ready about!--hard a-lee!" and with a great lurch the old craft went
about once more, the renewed shrieking in every kind of pitch in the
rigging, and the blinding dash of spray, showing to what a hurricane the
gale had risen.

Salvé had been too much occupied with the damaged wheel at first to have
a thought to spare for anything else; but it recurred to him very soon
that when that first dark sea had broken over them so unexpectedly from
leeward, he had seen for a moment the glimmer of two lights on its
crest, and a world of associations was at once aroused in his mind: it
seemed to the lad's romantic fancy that he was keeping an appointment