Early in the afternoon the seas rose sixty feet high, at a safe guess, and began combing over our stern again. The after bulkheads were now giving way and it looked like our finish. The skipper had passed the word for all hands to turn to and save ship. We tore down doors, lockers, anything for lumber, and set to work reinforcing bulkheads. As soon as one carried away, we built another. The deck had tons of water on it and was leaking badly. Also the fire-room was filling up. The pumps were set going and we kept about even with the water. It was a flip of a coin whether we would win through and every man was fighting for his life. At 6 P.M. the wind and sea decreased a little and the water stopped coming over. At 10 o’clock we sighted the lighthouses on the Spanish coast and felt that we had better than an even break of getting into port. It was a tough experience, one that we don’t care to repeat, and the poor old _Corsair_ is all in, pretty much of a wreck barring her hull and engines. The ship’s company are a smashed-up, tired-out lot. There is hardly a man aboard without an assortment of bruises. My back is almost broken. [Illustration: ASSISTANT ENGINEER HAWTHORN AND HIS WATCH] [Illustration: THE CREW OF NUMBER THREE GUN] Throughout the ship men were endeavoring to do their duty and to perform the allotted tasks, just as this quartermaster had struggled to his station on the bridge when he thought that the _Corsair_ had been blown up. When one of the boats was in danger of being whisked away by a breaking sea, young Henry Outwater climbed into it and rove new falls, sticking to it until he had finished the job of working the stiff rope through the blocks. He was under water part of the time, and the fury of the wind was such that “he whipped straight out like a pennant,” as he afterwards told his mates. At any moment he and the boat were likely to go careering off together on the back of a thundering sea. No officer of the _Corsair_ would have ordered him to risk his life in this fashion. He did it because he thought it ought to be done, a detail in the line of duty. The same spirit was shown by Boatswain’s Mate Mulcahy, who noticed that the port anchor needed to be secured. The ship was plunging her bows clean under as he crawled forward and fought the smothering seas while he wrestled with the lashings.