"Oh, I'm not so ignorant that I can't tell what latitude and longitude are," said Thornton; "and I know that Jupiter will be on the meridian at 8.32 to-night." "Well, then, you know some more things that are worth knowin' to a sailor-man, anyhow," declared Captain Whitby. For twenty-four hours the schooner glided along slowly and quickly, the wind constantly drawing ahead and forcing her off her course. Then it fell dead calm, and a heavy swell began to roll in from the southeast. "Mother," said Thornton, "don't be frightened, but we're going to have a storm." "Mercy sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Seabury; "how do you know? The Captain hasn't said so." "The barometer has fallen rapidly for the last six hours, and the wind has been backing from west to southwest and so on around to southeast," said Thornton, "and there's going to be a gale. The Captain hasn't said anything, because he does not wish to frighten you." Two hours later it began to blow in short uneasy puffs from the southeast, and Captain Whitby ordered the top-sails and foretopmast stay-sail taken in. He laid the vessel by the wind on the starboard tack, intending to push out as far as possible from dangerous proximity to the coast. At six o'clock in the evening it was blowing freshly, and the long swells were cut up into foaming ridges. "Get the fore-sail off her!" cried Captain Whitby to his little crew, and presently the big sheet of canvas was furled snugly on its boom. "In jib, and lay aft to reef the mains'l!" It was wild weather now, and no mistake. The big roaring green billows came raging down out of the dusk in the southeast, and as the schooner would lean far over to meet them it looked as if they were going to bury her. But as each sea approached, the schooner's bowsprit would swing upward with a great heave, the sea under-ran her, and down she came with a crash and a cloud of spray into the screeching hollow. "I'll have to ask you all to go below," said the Captain; "it isn't safe for you to be on deck. You might get washed overboard." Shut in the badly lighted little cabin, with the one lamp swinging madly, the agonized groaning of timbers all around them, and the thunder of tons of water falling on the deck above them, the Seaburys began to wish that they had never left their little home to go out on the treacherous ocean. They did not go to bed, but sat on the lockers, holding fast with both hands, and momentarily expecting that some terrible catastrophe would happen. About three o'clock in the morning they heard a loud shout and a heavy thump on the deck, followed by a rapid shuffling of feet. "What can have happened?" exclaimed Mr. Seabury. "Oh, they're coming to tell us that we must take to the life-boat!" cried Mrs. Seabury. The cabin door was pushed open, and three sailors stumbled in, bearing the inanimate form of the Captain. "One o' the main throat-halyard blocks fell from aloft," said a sailor, "an' hit him. I reckon he's hurt bad."