Whether it was because this small shift in the wind still found the colliding seas travelling east and west, or that some heavy surge sweeping its volume along the starboard bow caused the barque to 'yaw' widely, as it is termed, and so brought a great weight of billow against the rudder: be the cause what it will, while my eye was rooted upon the card, the stern of the vessel was on a sudden run up with the velocity of a balloon from whose car all the ballast has been thrown, the spokes were wrenched from my hand as they revolved like the driving-wheel of a locomotive in full career, and I was sent spinning against the bulwark, from which I dropped upon my knees and so rolled over, stunned. For all I could tell I might have lain five minutes or five hours without my senses. I believe I was brought to by the washing over me of the water that lay in that lee-part of the deck into which I had been shot. I sat erect, but for a long while was unable to collect my mind, so bewildered were my brains by the fall, and so confounded besides by the uproar round about. I then made out the figure, as I took it, of the girl standing at the wheel, and got on my legs, and after feeling over myself, so to speak, to make sure that all my bones were sound, I staggered, or rather clawed my way up to the wheel; for the barque seemed now to me to be upon her beam-ends, and rolling with dreadful wildness, and there were times when the foaming waters rushed inboards over the rail which she submerged to leeward. The girl cried out when she spied me. I had to draw close, indeed, to be seen; it was as black down where I was thrown, as the inside of the vessel's hold. She cried out, I say, uttering some Danish exclamation, and then exclaimed: 'I feared you were lost; I feared that you had been thrown overboard; I ought not to have left you alone at the wheel. Tell me if you are hurt?' 'No; I am uninjured,' I replied. 'But what has become of the ship? I am only just recovered from my swoon.' 'Oh!' she cried, 'she has taken up the very situation you wished for. She has hove herself to. She came broadside to the sea after you were flung from the wheel. We are mercifully watched over. We dared not of ourselves have brought her to the wind.' All my senses were now active in me once more, and I could judge for myself. It was as the girl had said. The barque had fallen into the trough, and had taken up a position for herself, and was shouldering the heavy western surge with her bow, coming to and falling off in rhythmic sweep. Clouds of froth repeatedly broke over her forecastle; but she seemed while I then watched her to rise buoyant to each black curl of billow as it took her amidships. 'Will you help me to lash the helm?' cried the girl. 'It is all that the _Anine_ will need, I am sure. She will be able to fight the storm alone if we can secure the wheel.'