windlass chains. Jean saved himself from washing overboard by
cannoning into me; but before the dripping bowsprit rose again to mount
the swell, M. de Radisson was up, shaking off spray like a water-dog
and muttering to himself: "To be snuffed out like a candle--no--no--no,
my fine fellows! Leap to meet it! Leap to meet it!"

And he was at the wheel himself.

The ship gave a long shudder, staggered back, stern foremost, to the
trough of the swell, and lay weltering cataracts from her decks.

There was a pause of sudden quiet, the quiet of forces gathering
strength for fiercer assault; and in that pause I remembered something
had flung over me in the wash of the breaking sea. I looked to the
crosstrees. The mutineer was gone.

It was the first and last time that I have ever seen a smoking sea.
The ocean boiled white. Far out in the wake of the tide that had
caught us foam smoked on the track of the ploughing waters.
Waters--did I say? You could not see waters for the spray.

Then Jean bade me look how the stays'l had been torn to flutters, and
we both set about righting decks.

For all I could see, M. Radisson was simply holding the wheel; but the
holding of a wheel in stress is mighty fine seamanship. To keep that
old gallipot from shipping seas in the tempest of billows was a more
ticklish task than rope-walking a whirlpool or sacking a city.

Presently came two sounds--a swish of seas at our stern and the booming