Horror had succeeded the first consternation and alarm into which the entire crew were thrown by this sudden and unexpected catastrophe. The afterpart of the hull was covered with water, but the bows were jammed hard and fast upon the rocks, where the boiling sea made clean breaches over them, washing away those who crouched there. By one of these seas I was swept overboard, and in a few moments I rose to the surface, feeling battered and bruised, with the salt water gurgling in my throat and whizzing in my ears. I was washed towards some rocks, into the seaweed of which I dug my hands and clung to it, even with my teeth. For a moment the sea seemed to leave me, and I felt suspended above it. Then it rose again with tremendous force, and took me from my hold. I forgot all about the ship, and those who were perishing there; I thought only of myself, of self-preservation, and the dread of death. In that supreme moment of terror and agony I seemed to live a lifetime! Again I rose to the surface on the summit of the wave, which washed me along the slippery face of the rocks, and ere it descended I caught some seaweed again, above the point where I had been before, and again the water left me, suspended in air, and gasping for life. Sea after sea rose again, but none reached me now, and the waves only hissed and burst against the rocks below me, as if infuriated at having lost their prey. Once more I began to respire more freely, and hope grew in my heart--the hope that I might yet live. Then the dread that I might be sucked down by some wave more powerful than the rest caused me to make an effort, which then seemed to me super-human, to gain a footing; and slowly and laboriously I climbed upward to where even the highest spray fell far short of me; and in my heart I thanked God that I was safe, though where, or on what isle, I knew not. In the mist and darkness I ascended some fifty feet to a species of dry plateau ere I ventured to stop and rest, and then I heard what, amid my own trouble and terror, had partly escaped my ear: the roar of the breakers below, with the shrill shrieks of our perishing crew. 'For pity's sake help me, whoever you are!' cried a voice a little below me; and, extending a hand to one of our people who had reached a shelf of rock, I assisted him upward, and he proved to be Willie Rudderford, sorely battered and bruised, having been dashed repeatedly against the cliffs; and now we began to ascend higher together. I asked for Joe, the boatswain; but Willie only knew that they had been torn asunder by the waves that had swept him overboard, and he had not seen him again. Panting and often breathless, drenched and sodden, clinging to the rocks, we continued to ascend, so far that even the booming of the sea began to sound faint; and then we lay down together, worn out, yet past all thoughts of sleep, to await the coming day and whatever might betide us.