Here it come. Something that looked like the Atlantic up-ended loomed over the bows. The wind struck me flat on my back, in one grand crash of snapping wood, roaring water, thunder, and the fall of the pillars of the world. The ocean swept over me, yet I rose high in the air. I felt that the _Matilda_ was turning a back somersault. The rope nearly cut me in half. Just when my lungs were pumping so I couldn't hold my breath a heart-beat longer, the wind suddenly cut over my face. Man! It hit like a fire-engine stream! I turned and swallowed some of it before we went down into the deep again. After that, it was plain disorderly conduct. Part of the time I was playing at home, a little boy again, and part of the time I was having a hard time trying to sleep in strange lands. But the next thing I can swear to is that the moon was shining, and the _Matilda_ jumping like a horse. In spite of the aches and pains all over me, I just lay still for a minute and let it soak in that I was still on board this pretty good old world. Next, I thought of Mary and the rest of them and scrambled to my feet. I was dizzy--a three-inch cut across the top of my head gave reason enough for that, let alone the rest of the racket--and one eye was swelled shut. Otherwise, barring a sprained arm, a raw circle around me where the rope cut, a black-and-blue spot the size of a ham on my right leg, and all the skin off my knuckles, I was the same person. Saxton got himself up. We stared at each other. "Hello!" says he. "Hello!" says I. "Well, what the devil are you doing alive?" he says. He meant it, too. It seemed to astonish him greatly. This made me mad. "Well, I guess I have a right to," I says. At this we both laughed very hard. So hard I couldn't stop, till he grabbed me by the arm. "Mary!" he says. We both tried to cast our moorings. The knots were jammed beyond fingers and teeth. He took out a knife and we cut loose. On the way to the hatch we come across Jesse sitting up straight, staring out to sea. He put his hand to his head and put it down again, looking at his fingers. What he found so interesting in the fingers I don't know, but he couldn't take his eyes off of them. "Hurt, Jesse?" we asked him. He turned a face like a child's to us. "My," he says, "wasn't it wet!" "Come on!" says Sax; "he's all right!" We pulled the scuttle off by main strength. "Mary!" we called. "Mary!" "Yes!" she answered. The relief was so sweet my knees weakened. She came to the stair and looked up. Durned if the old lantern wasn't burning. That knocked me. I remembered lighting that lantern several hundred years ago, and here it was, still burning! "Are you hurt?" said Saxton. "Not--no, not much," she answered. "But nearly dead from fright--is it over?" "All over, thank God!" says Sax. "We only caught the edge of it, or-- The moon is shining now. There's a heavy sea still, but that's harmless if the boat isn't strained--do you want us to stay with you?"