[Illustration: WHAT THE FORWARD DECK-HOUSE LOOKED LIKE WHILE RUNNING FOR LISBON] Much water flowed down the stairways and ladders when deck-houses and bulkheads were rent and twisted, and the living quarters were as wet as a duck farm, but such damage was not vital. When the spacious forward house, used as the officers’ dining-room, was crushed for half its length, among the _débris_ flung this way and that was the panel with the carved couplet: “_North, East, South and West, The Corsair sails and knows no rest._” It was fished out from under the deck planking which had been pried up by the sea, and the seaman who found it eyed the oaken board in a pensive manner as he said: “Truer words were never spoken. The old boat has sailed every which way in the last two days, including upside down, and you can take it from me that there’s been nothing restful about her, nothing at all.” Ensign Schanze tried to tell what happened when next he wrote to the folks at home and he succeeded very well, adding details and touches which might otherwise have been overlooked: Picture to yourself the situation of a ship partly filling with water, at three o’clock in the morning, in a storm of ever-increasing violence, everybody on board wet and cold and exhausted, and then suddenly having a few beer-kegs loaded with dynamite going off just astern of her. It was a five-reel thriller and no mistake. We took the seaman’s forlorn hope of turning in that sea and trying to run before the storm, and we got away with it. The danger in that point of sailing lies in the possibility of having a sea board you from astern, and when that happens the ship usually founders. When I say that the _Corsair_ was wet, I mean wet, not merely moist. There was not a deck or a room in her, excepting the chart-house, which had at any time less than six inches of water sloshing about in it. At the instant just preceding the big smash that made us turn tail, I had left the bridge to go aft and look the ruins over. The big sea that squashed us, after doing its dirty work, rushed aft just as the ship rose to climb the next oncoming wave. At that moment I had reached the foot of the ladder that leads from the lower bridge to the main deck. As she was rolling hard and had a foot of water all over that deck, I was hanging to the hand-rail that runs along the deck-house. I heard the crash and knew what was stepping in my direction, so I clawed onto the hand-rail with both hands. The water came racing aft and piled up against my back until I was in a depth of at least six feet. My hold on the rail was useless and I was carried down the deck about a hundred feet in a most undignified attitude, to wit—in a posture halfway between sitting and lying on my back. Just as I regained my feet, the first mine went off. You can imagine my thoughts on the subject.