“Nor’west by south, sir,” answered the poor devil, nearly out of his head. “Now, by the jumpin’----” Here the wind cut off the rest, but there was a tumultuous scuffle of feet, and I could very well imagine the scene which was being enacted overhead; so as quickly as possible we dressed and went on deck to find a fresh gale blowing from the westward, with a very steep, quick sea. It was just daybreak and both sky and sea had a very ferocious aspect, the atmosphere being charged now and then with long spears of sleet. After looking at the weather for a few minutes I happened to glance to leeward, and was almost stunned to behold the ponderous headland of Cape St. Anthony, at the western end of Staten Land, towering into the sky, not more than three miles away! No wonder the old man was almost in convulsions. “We must be in the Straits of Le Maire,” said I to my wife. And so we were. It appears that Captain Scruggs had determined to try it, and had gone half-way through, when, at the eleventh hour, he decided that he couldn’t fetch by the land; and as the wind came on to blow a gale which the woolly bank had foretold, he wore ship to stand to the northward once more. He probably miscalculated the strength of the current, which runs through the straits with astonishing velocity, often reaching five knots an hour, for all at once the mate, whose sight in semi-darkness is better than the skipper’s, called out, “Land on the lee, sir.” Our position was really one of great peril, for we were on a dead lee shore and unable to carry sail enough to double the point with any degree of certainty. If we didn’t weather it, it was good-by for all hands, for even now we could see the great surges seething against that terrible coast, where the land is so bold that a ship may lay her jib-boom end head on against the cliffs and still have fathoms of water beneath her keel. With the canvas which was on her at the moment, lower topsails and foresail, it was an impossibility for the ship to hold her own, and as quickly as possible a double-reefed maintop-sail was set, the difference in going to windward being felt at once. But could she carry it? She _must_, for the lives of twenty-seven persons depended upon the ship’s weathering Cape St. Anthony. No one thought of breakfast, and at half-past eight it was blowing harder than ever, and in the heavy, windward rolls it seemed as though the masts themselves would succumb to the terrific puffs. From the shore we must have presented a magnificent spectacle indeed, had any one been there to witness the struggle going on between man’s skill and Nature’s power. Slowly we forged ahead; but slowly and far more certainly we drove down toward the foaming rocks; and all hands by this time, even the most callous of the sailors, realized that we were fighting in earnest now, fighting to save the ship. Not a word was spoken by any one; the men were collected at the weather-rail in