The waters of a wide estuary running six miles an hour, and meeting the long roll of the Channel, might well have been expected to produce a dangerous swell; but a spring-tide, combining with a gale of wind, had raised them at flood to an extraordinary height, and the violence of their discharge exceeded our anticipations accordingly. We had hardly encountered the first two or three breakers, when Ingram was staggered from the forecastle by the buffet of a counter sea, which struck us forward just as the regular swell caught us astern; the boat heeled almost on her beam ends, and he fell over the cabin door into the hold; the man at the helm was preparing for the tack as he saw his messmate's danger, and started forward to save him: he was too late; the poor fellow pitched upon his head and shoulders among the ballast; at the same instant the mainsail caught the wind, the boom swung across, and striking the helmsman on the back of the neck, swept him half overboard, where he lay doubled across the gunnel, with his arms and head dragging through the water, till I hauled him in. He was stunned and nearly scalped by the blow. Ingram lay moaning and motionless; the boat was at the mercy of the elements, while I stretched the poor fellows side by side at our feet. I had now to take the helm, for the little Frenchman was totally ignorant of the coast; he continued to hand the main-sheet; and O'More, who all night long had been sitting in silence against the cabin bulkhead, leaped manfully upon the forecastle and stood by the tackle there. We had now to put the boat upon the other tack, for the tide made it impossible to run before the wind. O'More belayed his sheet, and, as the cutter lay down again, folded his arms and leaned back on the weather-bulwark, balancing himself with his feet against the skylight.