To appreciate the effect of such a sea upon a ship like the _Grosvenor_, you must have crossed the Atlantic in a hurricane, not in an immense and powerful ocean steamer, but in a yacht. But even this experience would not enable you to realise our danger; for the yacht would not be overloaded with cargo, she would probably be strong, supple, and light; whereas the _Grosvenor_ was choked to the height of the hold with seven hundred and fifty tons of dead weight, and was a Nova Scotia soft wood ship, which means that she might start a butt at any moment and go to pieces in one of her frightful swoops downwards. Having lodged Miss Robertson in a secure and sheltered place, I crawled along the poop on to the main-deck and sounded the well again. I found a trifle over six inches of water in her, which satisfied me that she was still perfectly tight, and that the extra leakage was owing to the drainings from the decks. I regained the poop and communicated the good news to the boatswain, who nodded; but I noticed that there was more anxiety in his face than I liked to see, and that he watched the ship very closely each time she pitched with extra heaviness. Miss Robertson was looking up at the masts with alarmed eyes; but I pointed to them and smiled, and shook my head to let her know that their wrecked appearance need not frighten her. I then took the telescope, and, making it fast over my back, clambered into the mizzen-top, she watching my ascent with her hands tightly clasped. The ensign still roared some half-dozen feet below the gaff-end; it was a brave bit of bunting to hold on as it did. I planted myself firmly against the rigging, and carefully swept the weather horizon, and finding nothing there, pointed the glass to leeward; but all that part of the sea was likewise a waste of foaming waves, with never a sign of a ship in all the raging seas. I was greatly disappointed, for though no ship could have helped us in such a sea, yet the sight of one hove to near us--and no ship afloat, sailer or steamer, but must have hove to in that gale--would have comforted us greatly, as a promise of help at hand, and rescue to come when the wind should have gone down. CHAPTER V. All that day the wind continued to blow with frightful force, and the sky to wear its menacing aspect. On looking, however, at the barometer at four o'clock in the afternoon, I observed a distinct rise in the mercury; but I did not dare to feel elated by this promise of an improvement; for, as I have before said, the only thing the mercury foretells is a change of weather, but what kind of change you shall never be sure of until it comes. What I most dreaded was the veering of the gale to an opposite quarter, whereby, a new sea being set running right athwart, or in the eye of the already raging sea, our decks would be helplessly swept and the ship grow unmanageable.