It was a wonder some of them did not fall off, getting sucked under the keel of the ship; but, gripping the life-line with a clutch of desperation, their passage across the perilous bridge was at last safely accomplished, when the entire sixteen of us, including my own humble self, were at length gathered together in one group on the counter-rail below the bend of the poop. The new-comers were then lashed to the mizzen rigging like the rest of us, and we all waited with what hope and patience we could for the sea to calm down. By this time, it was late in the afternoon; and, presently, the sun sank down away to the west in his ocean bed, surrounded by a radiant glow of crimson and gold that flashed upward from the horizon to the zenith. The wind had died away too, the last violent squall which had been so disastrous to the _Josephine_, having been the expiring blast of the hurricane; so, although, as I've said, the sea still continued to run high, the waves rolled by more regularly and with an equal pulsation, as if Father Neptune was rocking himself gradually to sleep. The old tyrant was evidently; exhausted with the mad rioting in which he had recently been indulging, and the thrashing which the gale had given him! There was no sleep for us, however, excepting such hasty little droppings off into brief forgetfulness that our worn-out bodies gave way to for an instant; for we were constantly being roused up, almost as soon as our wearied eyelids had closed, by the sudden rush of the spent wash of some broken wave wetting our already wet garments. This banished all thoughts of repose; and, when the darkness of night came on, it was cold and dreary in the extreme, the hours seeming to drag out to the length of a lifetime. Poor faithful Jake lay close to me so as to protect me as much as possible from the wash of the sea; and I found out, when morning light came once more to cheer us, that he had actually stripped off a guernsey vest, which Captain Miles had given him to save him from exposure on the night of the thunder-storm, and had fastened this round my shoulders in order to keep me warm! I shall never forget Jake's thoughtful action, I believe, as long as I live, for it made a great impression on me when I discovered such a striking proof of his devotion; and, as I now retrace the incidents of the past, the incident stands out prominently in evidence of a negro's brotherly love. Why, his black skin always seemed white to me ever after. Aye, although born an African, his heart was truer than that of many a European, whose complexion is only a trick of colour! During the night we were all silent; but, when the sun rose in the east, flooding the sea with the rosy tint of dawn, hope came back to us and our tongues were unloosed--the more especially as the force of the waves had considerably lessened, hardly a scrap of spray being now washed over us, while the blows of the billows against the side of the ship were no longer heard.