I extinguished my cigar and went to bed. It was then about a quarter to eleven, and till past one I lay awake, weary, yet unable to sleep. I lay listening to the frothing and seething of the water thrashing along the bends, broken into at regular intervals by the low thunder of the surge, burying my cabin porthole and rising to the line of the rail as the yacht's stern sank with a long slanting heel-over of the whole fabric. I fell asleep at last, and as I afterwards gathered, slept till somewhat after three o'clock in the morning. I was awakened by suddenly and violently rolling out of my bunk. The fall was a heavy one; I was a big fellow, and struck the plank of the deck hard, and though I was instantly awakened by the shock of the capsisal, I lay for some moments in a condition of stupefaction, sensible of nothing but that I had tumbled out of my bunk. The little berth was in pitch darkness, and I lay, as I have said, motionless and almost dazed, till my ear caught a sound of shrieking ringing through a wild but subdued note of storm on deck, mingled with loud and fearful shouts, as of men bawling for life or death, with a trembling in every plank and fastening of the little fabric as though she were tearing herself to pieces. I got on to my legs, but the angle of the deck was so prodigious that I leaned helpless against the bulkhead, to the base of which I had rolled, though unconsciously. The shrieks were continued; I recognised Grace's voice, and the sound put a sort of frenzy into me, insomuch that, scarcely knowing how I managed, I had in an instant, opened the door of my little berth, and was standing, grabbing hold of the cabin table, shouting to let her know that I was awake and up, and that I heard her. _Now_, the uproar of what I took to be a squall of hurricane power was to be easily heard. The bellowing of the wind was horrible, and it was made more terrifying to land-going ears by the incessant hoarse shouts of the fellows on deck; but bewildered as I was, agitated beyond expression, not knowing but that as I stood there, gripping the table and shouting my sweetheart's name, the yacht might be foundering under my feet, I had wits enough to observe that the vessel was slowly recovering a level keel, rising from the roof-like slant which had flung me from my bed to an inclination that rendered the use of one's legs possible. I likewise noticed that she neither plunged nor rolled with greater heaviness than I had observed in her before I lay down. The sensation of her motion was as though she was slowly rounding before the wind, and beginning to scud over a surface that had been almost flattened by a hurricane-burst into a dead level of snow. I could hear no noise of breaking seas nor of rushing water, nothing but a cauldron-like hissing, through which rolled the notes of the storm in echoes of great ordnance.