The last shroud was at length severed, the last rope parted; the hull, drifting faster than the dead weight of wreck, fell astern of the horrible incumbrance, and the next flash of lightning showed the water boiling round the black spars ahead. “Hurrah!” shouted Holdsworth; but the men, wearied and faint after their long and great struggle, and sickened by the shriek of their perishing comrade, whose cry still sounded in their ears, answered the encouraging shout faint-heartedly. The ocean was still a black and howling wilderness, and the vessel plunged and rolled, and trembled in the jumping seas, with her head right in the wind’s eye, and the water pouring over her in sheets of undulating fire. The water had stove in the cuddy front, and was washing in tons down into the steerage. What they had now to do was to furl the cross-jack; aft came the men and clewed the sail up; on which the vessel fell broadside to the wind and rolled her bulwarks under water. To furl the cross-jack was a job full of peril; but, if the thing was to be done at all, it was to be done by a _coup de main_. Holdsworth, crying to the hands to follow him, sprang up the port mizzen rigging. Half-a-dozen went up after him, the rest skulked in the darkness, and stood holding their breath, expecting every moment the crash that should fling the men aloft into the sea. No glimpse of the brave fellows was to be obtained; nothing but the flapping outline of the white sail could be seen; the mast creaked harshly; but from time to time the men’s voices could be heard even above the roar of the tempest, the groaning of the ship, and the rolling of spare casks, a sheep-pen which had become unlashed, and other things about the waist and quarter-deck; and slowly the faint spaces of thundering canvas vanished in the darkness, and were securely stowed. Meanwhile, the hands about the poop had been sent to man the pumps. The carpenter had sounded the well and reported three feet of water in the hold. “She must be tight, sir! I am sure she is tight, sir! She has shipped the water that’s in her through the mast-coat of the main-mast!” the skipper shouted to Holdsworth, who stood, panting from his exertions aloft, close against the mizzen-mast, that he might judge what chance there was of its standing. Meanwhile, the wheel was hard a-starboard, and the gale was now upon the ship’s quarter, the huge waves breaking under her counter and sending her wildly yawing forward. Had there been daylight, they could have rigged up a jury foresail on the stump of the fore-mast, which would have served to keep her before the wind; but nothing could be done in the overwhelming darkness except to keep the pumps at work.