days. The Curlew proved herself a stanch and buoyant craft, easily
controlled and as stiff under sail as a two decker.

It was well for all hands that this was so, for the cyclone was a
dangerous one, being a stray tempest from that center breeding place of
storms, the West Indies. On the second day the two strong men who were
required to steer had to be lashed to the wheel. Great combers
occasionally swept the decks from bow to stern. After one of these the
little schooner would rise, staggering not unlike a drunken man, the
brine pouring in torrents from the scuppers, and the very hull
quivering from the shock of the impact of those tons of water.

The hatches were battened down and after the first day Captain Gary
never left the deck. He had food and drink brought to him, as he swung
to the weather shrouds, where he at times lashed himself, to avoid
being washed overboard.

He was the coolest man on the ship, never losing either presence of
mind or a certain lightness of spirits, totally unlike the apparently
ungovernable fury that possessed him when crossed by any one under his
authority. His slight figure and gloved white hands seemed endowed
with muscles of steel; he was, to all appearance, impervious to fatigue
or fear.

"He's a sailor, right," exclaimed Duff one day to Rucker, after Gary
had brought the schooner unscathed through a mountainous wave that had
threatened to overwhelm everything. "I will say this for him, he knows
how to handle a ship."

"I should say!" declared the first mate. "There ain't his ekal