Olsen’s remark about Captain Gates’s knowing his business was a cut at Captain Scruggs for prowling around the deck forward at all hours of the day and night. Sailors hate this; and while a ship-master has the right to scour his vessel fore and aft if he sees fit, he is generally never seen forward of the galley, unless something special has happened. After dinner to-day, when we went up on the poop, we found that both wind and sea had increased, but there was nothing to warn us of what was to happen. We had arranged the folding-chairs against the wheel-house, sheltered from the violence of the wind by the bulwarks, and I was in the act of arranging a rug around my wife, when the skipper cried out, “Now, then, mind yourself!” We felt the ship rising higher and higher on an unusually heavy sea, and, looking forward, were just in time to see a great, white cataract roar over the weather-side abaft the main-rigging. Half of it tumbled into the waist, while the other half broke with a stunning crash full against the forward end of the poop-deck-house. It wrenched away a heavy wooden shutter, built to repel just such an attack as this, snapping a thick brass hook as if it had been of glass, washed away a short, massive ladder leading to the top of the deck-house, and then bore down upon us like a freshet. Captain Scruggs again came to the rescue, and, picking my wife up, chair and all, held her clear of the flood; while the only thing for me to do, seeing that my wife was safe, was to fall across one of the stern-bitts hard by and lift my legs out of the water as I best could; and here I remained for two minutes, floundering and wallowing about as though on a pivot, and this just after an especially hearty dinner. When most of the water had run off, the skipper placed my wife’s chair on the deck again with such dexterous cunning as to disengage the supporting-bar in the rear, letting the whole contrivance down flat, so that my wife lay prone upon the deck in the chill sea-water, which still swirled about our feet. It didn’t seem to disturb him much, and he only remarked, as he stamped on the deck, squirting little jets of water out of his Cape Horn slippers, “There, that’s more water than I’ve seen on this ship’s poop since I’ve had her.” It was really a grand spectacle as the sea broke on board, and would have made a superb subject for a camera.