The wind lulled for an instant, permitting the _Flying Foam_ to right herself from her careen, but again the wind bellowed over the sea, tearing away the foam and snow-white spoondrift from the wave-crests, and again the cutter was pressed down to her bearings by its force and fury. Pitchy darkness came on, but the vivid lightning flashes were incessant. Owing to the obscurity, the difficulty of the watch on deck in passing ropes to each other became great, and the alternate gleams, with a deluge of rain, so blinded them that they were scarcely able to execute an order; so, hoarsely and angrily, Ringbolt summoned on deck the watch below, and as they were somewhat tardy in obeying, he resorted, we are sorry to say, to much strong language. 'Show a leg and turn out!' he bellowed down the forecastle hatch, 'tumble up the watch--quick, you infernal chowderheads, you'll find it no child's play now.' As this reinforcement, only three or four in number, came 'tumbling up,' half dressed, the wind suddenly burst--but for a few minutes only--from an unexpected quarter, taking the cutter aback and throwing her nearly on her beam-ends. The man steering was hurled right over the wheel, the rest, with coils of rope and whatever was loose or had become loosened, were heaped in a mass of confusion among the lee scuppers. In alarm that the craft was foundering, Sir Redmond Sleath, forgetting all about Ellinor, then praying on her knees with arms stretched over her bed--praying till sickness again overpowered her--sought some Dutch courage in the steward's pantry by imbibing more than one stiff glass of brandy. Ringbolt was the first to gather himself up. With an oath he reached the wheel; the spokes revolved rapidly in his powerful grasp, and the cutter was righted in time to save the mast, but still intense darkness reigned--the lights of Cuxhaven had long since melted into the sea--with tremendous peals of thunder, while vast masses of water passed over the buoyant and gallant cutter, and the blinding rain and the bitter salt spray were mingled together. The lamp still burned in the binnacle, and the wetted garments and bronzed visage of Ringbolt shone in its wavering gleam as he grasped the spokes of the wheel, planted his feet firmly on the deck grating, and looked from time to time aloft, though he could discern nothing. Day began to dawn, but the gale still continued. The cutter was in the Elbe mouth, though no land was in sight; but Ringbolt knew that the two sandbanks between what is called the Southern and Northern Elbe lay ahead, but northward of Merwark Island; and, just as this reflection occurred to him, the mate came aft in the grey dawn, his face expressive of concern, to report 'the lower mast sprung!'