The steward came up, muffled to the chin in a long overcoat, and the sight of him brought to my mind poor Jim, lying asleep in a cabin berth. Down the after companionway I rushed, but was hardly clear of the stairs before I felt the ship heel still farther under a furious blast of wind, then straighten nearly upright; and over and above the sound of rattling canvas came Jack's thundering roar: "Keep full. Hard up your wheel. Stand by for stays. Down off--" Something had interrupted the order. I heard my wife scream, but I hurried into the forward cabin after Jim, just in time to see him leave the stateroom and dart out through the forward door. I followed him out, but he was not in sight on the main deck, nor was he among the men floundering down the poop steps to stations. So I mounted to the poop; and there, prone upon his back in the alley, was the unconscious form of Jack, with blood upon his face, and his mother bending over him. "The wind shifted, and the mizzen royal-yard shook out of her," said the second mate from near the wheel, "and something came down and hit him on the head." Lifting my wife to her feet, I examined him hurriedly, but found no cause for alarm. He was simply stunned by some falling object. "Let him lie where he is, and he'll come to directly," I said, and, leaving him to his mother, I joined the second mate to ask of Jim. But a voice from the top of the house interrupted my query--a voice like the blast of a speaking-trumpet, strangely like Jack's. And there was Jim beside the mizzenmast, bareheaded and erect, his stoop-shoulders squared, his eyes staring straight before him into the horizontal rain and drift from the combers. "Ready about," he had said in that borrowed voice. "Hard alee!" My wife screamed again, stood up, and stared at the figure on the house, and in a bound I had reached her. "It's your boy Jim," I said in her ear, "but keep quiet. He's asleep." She knew what I meant, and stood still, staring with wide-open, hungry eyes at Jim, with an occasional downward glance at Jack. "Get down off that house," sang out the second mate angrily. "Let him alone," I shouted, "and do what he orders. Do you hear? Obey his orders to the letter. They will be correct." I hardly knew this myself, but the second mate believed me. He motioned to the helmsman, who ground the wheel hard down. Forward, the forecastle men had let go the foretopmast staysail sheet, and this sail flapped furiously as the ship came slowly up to the wind. I hastened to the compass and looked. Though I could not have named the points, I could see that the wind was now blowing from the southwest, and that the ship _had_ been heading nearly straight for that line of sand. I went back to my wife, and Jim turned his expressionless face and sleepy eyes toward the second mate, who had nervously followed me.