As the water on the deck subsided the men on the fife-rail left their refuge. One group, led by the redoubtable Mr. Pike, strove to capture a mass of planks and twisted steel. For the moment I did not recognize what it was. The carpenter, with two men, sprang upon Number Three hatch and worked hurriedly and fearfully. And I knew why Captain West had turned tail to the storm. Number Three hatch was a wreck. Among other things the great timber, called the “strong-back,” was broken. He had had to run, or founder. Before our decks were swept again I could make out the carpenter’s emergency repairs. With fresh timbers he was bolting, lashing, and wedging Number Three hatch into some sort of tightness. When the _Elsinore_ dipped her port-rail under and scooped several hundred tons of South Atlantic, and then, immediately rolling her starboard-rail under, had another hundred tons of breaking sea fall in board upon her, all the men forsook everything and scrambled for life upon the fife-rail. In the bursting spray they were quite hidden; and then I saw them and counted them all as they emerged into view. Again they waited for the water to subside. The mass of wreckage pursued by Mr. Pike and his men ground a hundred feet along the deck for’ard, and, as the _Elsinore’s_ stern sank down in some abyss, ground back again and smashed up against the cabin wall. I identified this stuff as part of the bridge. That portion which spanned from the mizzen-mast to the ’midship-house was missing, while the starboard boat on the ’midship-house was a splintered mess. Watching the struggle to capture and subdue the section of bridge, I was reminded of Victor Hugo’s splendid description of the sailor’s battle with a ship’s gun gone adrift in a night of storm. But there was a difference, I found that Hugo’s narrative had stirred me more profoundly than was I stirred by this actual struggle before my eyes. I have repeatedly said that the sea makes one hard. I now realized how hard I had become as I stood there at the break of the poop in my wind-whipped, spray-soaked pyjamas. I felt no solicitude for the forecastle humans who struggled in peril of their lives beneath me. They did not count. Ah—I was even curious to see what might happen, did they get caught by those crashing avalanches of sea ere they could gain the safety of the fife-rail. And I saw. Mr. Pike, in the lead, of course, up to his waist in rushing water, dashed in, caught the flying wreckage with a turn of rope, and fetched it up short with a turn around one of the port mizzen-shrouds. The _Elsinore_ flung down to port, and a solid wall of down-toppling green upreared a dozen feet above the rail. The men fled to the fife-rail. But Mr. Pike, holding his turn, held on, looked squarely into the wall of the wave, and received the downfall. He emerged, still holding by the turn the captured bridge.