into a gale--the famous October gale of twenty-two years ago. It was
wind, lightning, sleet, snow, and a terrific sea. We were flying light,
and you may imagine how bad it was when I tell you we had smashed
bulwarks and a flooded deck. On the second night she shifted her ballast
into the lee bow, and by that time we had been blown off somewhere on
the Dogger Bank. There was nothing for it but go below with shovels and
try to right her, and there we were in that vast hold, gloomy like a
cavern, the tallow dips stuck and flickering on the beams, the gale
howling above, the ship tossing about like mad on her side; there we
all were, Jermyn, the captain, everyone, hardly able to keep our feet,
engaged on that gravedigger's work, and trying to toss shovelfuls of wet
sand up to windward. At every tumble of the ship you could see vaguely
in the dim light men falling down with a great flourish of shovels.
One of the ship's boys (we had two), impressed by the weirdness of the
scene, wept as if his heart would break. We could hear him blubbering
somewhere in the shadows.

"On the third day the gale died out, and by-and-by a north-country tug
picked us up. We took sixteen days in all to get from London to the
Tyne! When we got into dock we had lost our turn for loading, and they
hauled us off to a tier where we remained for a month. Mrs. Beard (the
captain's name was Beard) came from Colchester to see the old man. She
lived on board. The crew of runners had left, and there remained only
the officers, one boy, and the steward, a mulatto who answered to the
name of Abraham. Mrs. Beard was an old woman, with a face all wrinkled
and ruddy like a winter apple, and the figure of a young girl. She
caught sight of me once, sewing on a button, and insisted on having my
shirts to repair. This was something different from the captains' wives
I had known on board crack clippers. When I brought her the shirts, she
said: 'And the socks? They want mending, I am sure, and John's--Captain