BARNES ADVISES AND DAVE RESOLVES Just as the spinning dory reached the vortex, a change came over the turbulent water. The fiercest suction seemed to have spent itself. The whirlpool became a dozen smaller eddies, each with its rapidly revolving current, and though the dory danced from one point of danger to another it remained afloat. Loose spars and gear from the derelict began to shoot up to the surface. “Let her have it now, lads,” shouted the bo’sun. “This’ll be our only chance of getting any one who went down.” A minute later both dorys were over the place where the _Miriam_ had sunk, and two unconscious forms were soon lifted out of the water. “There’s two more somewhere,” Mr. Quick shouted across, as a number of men in each boat began to apply artificial respiration to the half-drowned victims. Dave, happening to look a little way from the scene of the tragedy, noticed something awash on the surface for a moment. “There’s a man over there, Mr. Grimes,” he yelled to the bo’sun, and the dory was urged across the intervening space. “Sure enough there is,” said Grimes, as they drew near. “You’ve got quick eyes, lad. If this chap has any kick left in him he’ll owe his life to you.” The man’s form was just sinking again when they got hold of it with a boat hook. He was a deck hand named Hawke, who had gone out of his way on more than one occasion to do an act of kindness to the boy. For nearly half an hour the dorys cruised about the scene of the disaster, in the hope of picking up the remaining member of the crew, but the sea had claimed her toll; and for some days afterward there brooded over the ship an air of gloom, the missing man having been not only a good sailor but a popular comrade. The rest of the voyage, until they made their first stop, at New Orleans, was uneventful. Dave was bitterly disappointed to find that, as they were only to remain in port a few hours, nobody was allowed ashore, and he left the gate of Louisiana with only a confused memory of docks. The weather remained favourable in the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea; and the boy settled down to ship’s routine during the long run to Cape Horn, where the _Pacific Queen_ ran into a furious gale, which battered her for four days. It was Dave’s first experience of really bad weather, and with it came more seasickness, for the ship sometimes lay over at an angle of forty-five degrees, or seemed to be trying to stand on her nose as she slid down the mountainous seas. Green waves were shipped, but little damage was done, everything movable having been securely lashed. The cook had a miraculous faculty of keeping on his feet and manipulating dishes and pans when by all known laws of gravitation he should have been sprawling. The first time Dave was jerked off his legs by a violent roll of the ship Barnes hurled a stream of invective at him, performing wondrous gymnastics with his bushy eyebrows and balancing a stew-pan on the galley stove the while.