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
of surf against coast rocks. Then M. de Radisson did the maddest thing
that ever I have seen. Both sounds told of the coming tempest. The
veering wind settled to a driving nor'easter, and M.
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