Mr. Pike was splendid, marvellous. Even as the _Elsinore_ was rounding to on the wind, while the head-yards were still being braced, and even as he was watching the ship’s behaviour and the wheel, in between his commands to Tom Spink of “A spoke! A spoke or two! Another! Steady! Hold her! Ease her!” he was ordering the men aloft to loose sail. I had thought, the manoeuvre of wearing achieved, that we were saved, but this setting of all three upper-topsails unconvinced me. The moon remained hidden, and to leeward nothing could be seen. As each sail was set, the _Elsinore_ was pressed farther and farther over, and I realized that there was plenty of wind left, despite the fact that the gale had broken or was breaking. Also, under this additional canvas, I could feel the _Elsinore_ moving through the water. Pike now sent the Maltese Cockney to help Tom Spink at the wheel. As for himself, he took his stand beside the booby-hatch, where he could gauge the _Elsinore_, gaze to leeward, and keep his eye on the helmsmen. “Full and by,” was his reiterated command. “Keep her a good full—a rap-full; but don’t let her fall away. Hold her to it, and drive her.” He took no notice whatever of me, although I, on my way to the lee of the chart-house, stood at his shoulder a full minute, offering him a chance to speak. He knew I was there, for his big shoulder brushed my arm as he swayed and turned to warn the helmsmen in the one breath to hold her up to it but to keep her full. He had neither time nor courtesy for a passenger in such a moment. Sheltering by the chart-house, I saw the moon appear. It grew brighter and brighter, and I saw the land, dead to leeward of us, not three hundred yards away. It was a cruel sight—black rock and bitter snow, with cliffs so perpendicular that the _Elsinore_ could have laid alongside of them in deep water, with great gashes and fissures, and with great surges thundering and spouting along all the length of it. Our predicament was now clear to me. We had to weather the bight of land and islands into which we had drifted, and sea and wind worked directly on shore. The only way out was to drive through the water, to drive fast and hard, and this was borne in upon me by Mr. Pike bounding past to the break of the poop, where I heard him shout to Mr. Mellaire to set the mainsail. Evidently the second mate was dubious, for the next cry of Mr. Pike’s was: “Damn the reef! You’d be in hell first! Full mainsail! All hands to it!” The difference was appreciable at once when that huge spread of canvas opposed the wind. The _Elsinore_ fairly leaped and quivered as she sprang to it, and I could feel her eat to windward as she at the same time drove faster ahead. Also, in the rolls and gusts, she was forced down till her lee-rail buried and the sea foamed level across to her hatches. Mr. Pike watched her like a hawk, and like certain death he watched the Maltese Cockney and Tom Spink at the wheel.