I shook my head, still preserving my smile, though Heaven knows, had my countenance taken its expression from my mood, it must have shown as long as the yacht herself. I could see her straining her ears to listen, whilst her gaze--large, bright, her brows arched, her lips parted, her breast swiftly heaving--roamed over the cabin. "What is that noise of thunder, Herbert?" "It is the wind," I answered. "Are not the waves getting up? Oh! feel this!" she cried, as the yacht rose with velocity and something of violence to the under-running hurl of a chasing sea, of a power that was but too suggestive of what we were to expect. "The _Spitfire_ is a stanch, noble little craft," said I, "built for North Sea weather. She is not to be daunted by anything that can happen hereabouts." "But what _has_ happened?" she cried, irritable with alarm. I was about to utter the first reassuring sentence that occurred to my mind, when the companion was slid a little way back, and I just caught sight of a pair of legs ere the cabin lamp was extinguished by such another yell and blast of wind as had before nearly stretched me. Grace shrieked and threw her arms round my neck; the cover was closed, and the interior, instantly becalmed again. "Who's that?" I roared. "Me, sir," sounded a voice out of the blackness where the companion steps stood; "Files, sir. The captain asked me to step below to report what's happened. He dursn't leave the deck himself." I released myself from my darling's clinging embrace and lighted the lamp for the third time. Files, wrapped in streaming oilskins, resembled an ebony figure over which a bucket of dripping has been emptied, as he stood at the foot of the steps with but a bit of his wet, grey-coloured face showing betwixt the ear-flaps and under the fore-thatch of his sou'wester. "Now for your report, Files, and bear a hand with it for mercy's sake." "Well, sir, it's just this; it had been breezing up, and we double-reefed the mainsail, Captain Caudel not liking the look of the weather, when a slap of wind carried pretty nigh half the mast over the side. We reckon--for we can't see--that it's gone some three or four feet below the cross-trees. The sail came down with a run, and there was a regular mess of it, sir, the wessel being buried. We've had to keep her afore it until we could cut the wreckage clear, and now we're agoing to heave her to, and I'm to tell ye with Capt'n Caudel's compliments not to take any notice of the capers she may cut when she heads the sea." "One moment. Is she sound in her hull?" "Yes, sir." "Heaven be praised! And how is the wind?" "About nor'-nor'-east, sir." "Then, of course, we've been running sou'-sou'-west, heading right into the open channel?" He said yes. "How does the weather look, Files?" "Werry black and noisy, sir."