A great sea of solid water had broken over the schooner’s bows, and swept aft in such a volume that it must have flooded the cabin had not the skipper, who stood in the companion-way, pulled the slide. As it was, about a bucketful had made its way in, and a portion of it had fallen on Breeze. Scrambling from the bunk, he found his companions clad in their oil-skins and prepared to hurry on deck at the first notice that their presence was needed. Several of them were picking themselves up from the floor, to which they had been flung by the shock of the big wave, and one was lamenting a broken pipe. They were much more sober now than at supper-time, and their conversation, which was entirely of wreck and disaster, was not calculated to fill the boy with cheerful thoughts. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was past midnight, and the skipper’s warning that there would be no sleep for them after that hour flashed into his mind. Following the example of the others, he pulled on his oil-skins, and sat down to wait, he knew not what for. A few minutes later the summons came. It was an unintelligible cry from the watch on deck, but its meaning was clear to the practised ears of those below, and as the skipper sprang up the steps, the others followed. When Breeze reached the deck and felt the full force of the blast, it seemed to drive the breath from his body. The wind was shrieking through the strained rigging like a hundred steam-whistles. The snow had turned into fine particles of ice that pricked like needles. The billows hissed and seethed as, with streaming manes of glistening white, they galloped past the quivering vessel. Now she was poised on the crest of a gigantic wave, and the next instant buried in a yawning depth, beneath a smother of broken waters that leaped high up on her masts. By the rays of the riding-light, that still burned steadily just abaft the foremast, Breeze could make out the several members of the crew clinging to whatever seemed to promise the greatest safety, the fife-rail, halyards, or rigging. Away forward, beside the groaning windlass, was a figure which he knew to be that of the skipper, crouching, axe in hand, ready to cut the cable. All this had been taken in at one glance, the next revealed the cause of the outcry from the watch on deck. A light dead ahead was bearing swiftly down upon them. It was that of a fishing schooner torn from her anchorage, and being hurled by the storm giant, like a bolt of destruction, through the helpless fleet. During the fearful suspense of the next minute the boy did not breathe, and his very heart seemed to cease its beating. Twice the gleaming axe in the skipper’s hand was raised to strike. Each time he thought of the vessels anchored astern of the _Albatross_, upon which she must drive in turn if cut adrift, and the blow was withheld.