"We carried, by Captain Macnaughten's orders, a hurricane lamp on our fore-stay. Someone had lit a second amidships, where we huddled in oilskins and under tarpaulins like a congregation of eels. . . . Jarvis, our best seaman, had the tiller. He sat, all hunched, crouching forward over a third small lamp--the binnacle lamp with which our boat, like the others, was providentially fitted. The rain, however, beat on its glass in such sheets that he could not possibly have read the compass card floating by the wick. Nor--I am sure--was he trying to read it. He just sat and steered by the feel of the seas as they lurched ahead and sank abaft. The lamplight glowed up on his cheek-bones, but was lost under the pent of his sou'wester, which had a sort of crease or channel in its fore-flap, that shed down the rain in a flood. Though we lay, we passengers, on the bottom boards we could see nothing of his face, so far forward he bent. "Then Grimalson lost his head. He was seated at Jarvis's shoulder in the stern-sheets, with a hefty seaman (Prout by name) on his other hand tending the sheet--the both of 'em starboard of Jarvis. Of a sudden he started up, reached forward, snatched the midships light, and held it aloft against the wall of a tremendous sea arching astern. At sight of it the fool lost all his remaining nerve, and yelled to the two seamen forward to lash a couple of oars to the painter and cast overboard. 'If we ran another hundred yards, we were lost: there was no hope but to fetch around head-to-sea and ride to it.' "--Which, after some seven or eight sickening minutes, we did. He was master, and Jarvis put down the helm and obeyed. Twice we were heaved, tilted and slid sideways down, like folks perched on the window-sills of a falling house. Then she came fair about and rode to it, every crest flinging more or less of spray over us, hour after hour. . . . "But I must tell you one thing. From time to time we were roused up in the darkness, to bale. Our work performed, we three passengers-- Santa and Farrell and I--would creep under the tarpauling anew, out of the drumming rain, and coil there to sleep. . . . Ay, and once in the pitch blackness under, she, mistaking, reached two arms around my neck and with a long sigh, dead-beat, sank asleep. That was all. . . . Farrell lay as he had tumbled, like a log across my ankles. . . . I held her, crooked by my elbow against my side, her head drowsed on my shoulder, her body pulsing against mine. I am telling you all, and I tell you that I did not dare to kiss her. Lying awake, with Farrell across my feet, I held her to me, feeling her breathe. "At hint of dawn Jarvis, who had been watching the seas the night through, barked us out of cover. The rain had ceased, the gale had swept southward as fast as it had come. The sea heaved almost as steeply as ever, but the toppling waves no longer flung any spray over us, or any to mention."