mistake lay in what he did after the wind came. He hove to on the
port tack, which was the right thing to do south of the Equator,
IF--and there was the rub--IF one were NOT in the direct path of
the hurricane. We were in the direct path. I could see that by
the steady increase of the wind and the equally steady fall of
the barometer. I wanted to turn and run with the wind on the port
quarter until the barometer ceased falling, and then to heave to.
We argued till he was reduced to hysteria, but budge he would
not. The worst of it was that I could not get the rest of the
pearl-buyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway, to know more about
the sea and its ways than a properly qualified captain?

Of course, the sea rose with the wind, frightfully, and I shall
never forget the first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped. She
had fallen off, as vessels do when hove to, and the first sea
made a clean breach. The lifelines were only for the strong and
well, and little good were they even for these when the women and
children, the bananas and cocoanuts, the pigs and trade-boxes,
the sick and the dying, were swept along in a solid, screeching,
groaning mass.

The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne's decks flush with the
rails, and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward,
all the miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was
a human torrent. They came head-first, feet-first, sidewise,
rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing, and
crumpling up. Now and again one or another caught a grip on a
stanchion or a rope, but the weight of the bodies behind tore
such grips loose. I saw what was coming, sprang on top the cabin,
and from there into the mainsail itself. Ah Choon and one of the