But, unfortunately, in one furious squall the ship broke round off, so as to present her quarter to the sea at an unlucky moment: for it came seven deep again, a roaring mountain, and hurled itself over her stern and quarter. The mighty mass struck her stem frame with the weight of a hundred thousand tons of water, and drove her forward as a boy launches his toy-boat on a pond; and though she made so little resistance, stove in the dead lights and the port frames, burst through the cabin bulkheads, and washed out all the furniture, and Colonel Kenealy in his nightgown with a table in his arms borne on water three feet deep, and carried him under the poop awning away to the lee quarter-deck scuppers, and flooded the lower deck. Above, it swept the quarter-deck clean of everything except the shrieking helmsmen; washed Dodd away like a cork, and would have carried him overboard if he had not brought up against the mainmast and grasped it like grim death, half drowned, half stunned, sorely bruised, and gasping like a porpoise ashore. He held on by the mast in water and foam, panting. He rolled his despairing eyes around; the bulwarks fore and aft were all in ruins, with wide chasms, as between the battlements of some decayed castle; and through the gaps he saw the sea yawning wide for him. He dare not move: no man was safe a moment unless lashed to mast or helm. He held on, expecting death. But presently it struck him he could see much farther than before. He looked up: it was clearing overhead, and the uproar abating visibly. And now the wind did not decline as after a gale: extraordinary to the last, it blew itself out. Sharpe came on deck, and crawled on all fours to his captain, and helped him to a life-line. He held on by it, and gave his orders. The wind was blown out, but the sea was as dangerous as ever. The ship began to roll to windward. If that was not stopped, her fate was sealed. Dodd had the main trysail set and then the fore trysail, before he would yield to go below, though drenched, and sore, and hungry, and worn out. Those sails steadied the ship; the sea began to go down by degrees; the celestial part of nature was more generous: away flew every cloud, out came the heavenly sky bluer and lovelier than ever they had seen it; the sun flamed in its centre. Nature, after three days' eclipse, was so lovely, it seemed a new heavens and a new earth. If there was an infidel on board who did not believe in God, now his soul felt Him, in spite of the poor little head. As for Dodd, who was naturally pious, he raised his eyes towards that lovely sky in heartfelt, though silent, gratitude to its Maker for saving the ship and cargo and her people's lives, not forgetting the private treasure he was carrying home to his dear wife and children.