What a change! A heavy squall was bearing down, and all hands were working like demons to get the ship stripped. Some were aloft cutting away the earings so as to let the sails go overboard, while others were letting go halyards, sheets and tacks. A kind of fog or mist was settling down, and the sails slatting against the masts and shrouds made a horrible din, to say nothing of the hoarse orders that the captain and Ike were bawling out. I ran up the shrouds to help Summers cut away the mains’il. “Good G—, Ike, you must have been mad to let that squall catch the ship with all sail on. Where was the captain?” I cried. “He was below. I just called him. It came faster than I reckoned on.” “You’ve done it this time! If we ar’n’t dismasted it won’t be your fault.” We got the mains’il loose, and I had just slid down the backstay to the deck when Miss Marion came running up with face as white as a sheet, but perfectly cool. “Tell me what I can do to help,” she implored. “Close the lazarette hatchway,” I answered, “and see all the cabin windows and skylights shut. Then stay below.” Mrs. Fairley was a very nervous woman, and the suddenness of the affair had upset her completely. There she stood at the break of the poop clinging to a tops’il brace, and literally paralyzed with terror. Miss Marion went to her mother’s assistance, and at the same moment the captain ordered me to take my watch and haul up the fores’il. They were the last words I ever heard him speak. All this had happened within two or three minutes of my coming on deck, and but few of the light sails had been cut away when I got some of my watch at work on the fores’il. The first thing I knew, an extra heavy gust struck the ship and heeled her over about twenty-five degrees. That wasn’t much, but I tell you a lump came in my throat the next second when I heard a dull roar in the hold beneath. All of us knew what that muffled sound meant—the cargo had shifted! [Picture: “The ship went clear over on her side”] Of course the ship went clear over on her side then, and the squall broke on us in earnest right after. Everybody grasped whatever he could lay his hands on to keep from sliding down the deck. There was no sea running to speak of, and the chances of saving the ship were fair provided the squall soon passed over; but as the thought of Ike Summers having caused all this came over me, I was in such a fury that if he’d been near by then, I could have pitched him overboard, and not been sorry. I won’t speak of what we all felt as we clung there on different parts of the ship,—it had all been so sudden, but before anything could be done to right her, the main mast broke off underneath the deck, ripping her all open amidships. The water poured in at an awful rate, and all hands knew the ship was doomed. “The boats! Cut the lashings before she founders!” I yelled.