As Jack hurriedly lashed himself to the wheel, the bosun's deep voice broke through the noise of the gale like a foghorn. "Aloft, all hands!" he thundered. "Away aloft for your lives." The men needed no second bidding, but raced up the ratlines, for a gigantic roller was raising its head above them to starboard as it tore down upon the _Higgins_. It was a moment of terrible peril. Would they go clear of the barque? Would the huge "grey-beard" destroy them? Two heavy chances against them. Everything depended on Jack's skill, his keen eye, his strong arm, and his nerve--above all, his nerve. The elements had taken up his wild challenge with a vengeance. He had swung the _Higgins_ four points off her course and stood braced ready for the shock, for that terror of sailors, a pooper, was approaching at terrific speed. The bosun, half way up the mizzen rigging, yelled wildly to him. He caught something about "hanging on," but the rest was lost in the roar of the gale. Over his shoulder he caught a quick glimpse of the approaching sea, a great wall of water, black and forbidding, which, as it raced in pursuit of the flying clipper, grew momentarily more mountainous, until, having reached the limit of its growth, it burst its whole length of summit into boiling, hissing white water, which gave it more than ever the appearance of a snow-capped ridge of solid earth. As Jack turned his eyes resolutely away, he realised how the inhabitants of Herculaneum must have felt the moment before Vesuvius poured its molten lava upon them. Still he stood erect, head up, without a flinch. It was a position sufficient to scare the stoutest heart, and freeze a man's brain into idiocy. Yet his nerve never failed him, whilst the watch clung aloft, shaking with sheer fright, and with wavering eyes stared wildly from the helpless barque to Jack, and from Jack to the swooping demon of a sea, which, roaring and raging in pursuit, lifted its foaming head on a level with their blanched faces. Broncho, hanging in the fore-rigging, gave his chum up for lost. "He's shore due to cash in this time," he muttered sadly. "Even if we-alls go clear o' that ship, he'll come through the racket a drowned cawpse. Poor old Jack, standin' thar game as hornets, no more fretted than if he's coolly sittin' down to a poker game." Jack gave one last look astern at the approaching sea, and then a keen glance at the hove-to Scotchman. "We'll do it by the skin of our teeth," he murmured, as he put the helm up a few spokes to steady her as she went. And now the mountain of water was upon him. Catching the _Higgins_ on her starboard quarter, it hit the mizzen-mast half way up to the crossjack yard, and with a fearful din went raging over everything. It washed over the poop until the spanker boom was hidden; the two quarter-boats were smashed into staves, and there was a crash of splintered glass as the windows of the afterhouse went in.