His voice arrested their progress, and two of the men already on the yards sprang back into the top; but the warning came too late for the rest. A tremendous squall struck the ship. Over she heeled, till the lee bulwarks were under water. A loud crash followed. Away went the main-topmast, and yard, and struggling sail, carrying six human beings with it. Five were hurled off into the now foaming sea. We saw them for an instant stretching out their arms, as if imploring that help which it was beyond our power to give. The ship dashed onward, leaving them far astern. One still clung to the rigging towing with the spar alongside. The ship still lay almost on her beam-ends. O'Carroll saw the possibility of saving the poor fellow. Calling out to me to lay hold of a rope, one end of which he fastened round his waist, he plunged overboard. I could scarcely have held it, had not William and Trundle with Kelson come to my assistance. O'Carroll grasped the man. "Haul away!" he shouted. In another instant he was on board again, with the man in his arms. The helm was put up, the ship righted, the man had got off the foreyard, and away the ship new, with the fore-topsail wildly bulging out right before the wind. In a few minutes it was blown from the bolt-ropes in strips, twisted and knotted together. The mainsail, not without difficulty, was handed, and we continued to run on under the foresail, the only other sail which remained entire, and it seemed very probable that that would soon be blown away. All this time the terror of the unfortunate passengers was very great-- the more so that it was undefined. They saw the captain, however, every now and then come into the cabin and toss off a tumbler of strong rum-and-water, and then return on deck, and shout out with oaths often contradictory orders. The gale all this time was increasing, until it threatened to become as violent as the hurricane from which we had escaped. I could not help wishing that we had not left our leaky little schooner. We might have reached some land in her. Now we did not know where we were going, except towards a region of rocks and sandbanks on which any moment the ship might be hurled. For ourselves it would be bad enough; but hard indeed for the poor women and children, of whom there were a dozen or more on board, several of them helpless infants.