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.

For three hours more, alone with this gruesome companion, Chris held the
_Sophie Sutherland_ before the wind and sea. He had long since forgotten
his mangled fingers. The bandages had been torn away, and the cold, salt
spray had eaten into the half-healed wounds until they were numb and no
longer pained. But he was not cold. The terrific labor of steering
forced the perspiration from every pore. Yet he was faint and weak with
hunger and exhaustion, and hailed with delight the advent on deck of the
captain, who fed him all of a pound of cake-chocolate. It strengthened
him at once.

He ordered the captain to cut the halyard by which the cook's body was
towing, and also to go forward and cut loose the jib-halyard and sheet.
When he had done so, the jib fluttered a couple of moments like a
handkerchief, then tore out of the bolt-ropes and vanished. The _Sophie
Sutherland_ was running under bare poles.

By noon the storm had spent itself, and by six in the evening the waves
had died down sufficiently to let Chris leave the helm. It was almost