That night the storm seemed at its height; and it was an anxious, trying night, with the wind howling and the rain coming down in sheets. Very few went to sleep. The water could not be kept out. It came in through the ports and through the seams in the cabin roofs. On the top deck, stateroom doors were forced and the rooms flooded. Beds were wet and some cabin floors awash. The boat hove to and kept its nose to the wind. I later heard that we made eight miles in fifteen hours under steam, but we knew not how far we had been blown from our course. After about eight nerve-racking hours, the wind began to abate; and by Saturday, the 18th--although the wind and sea both remained high, with the weather thick and rainy--we firmly believed that we were running out of the typhoon. After drifting in heavy squalls and thick weather all day, I dozed away that night in a wet bed. Later I was awakened by the rising wind, howling through the ship's passageways and superstructures. We were running into the typhoon again. No more sleep that night. Experienced mariners know that the way to get out of a typhoon is to keep the wind on the starboard bow and side, gradually working out or getting blown out. This our ship's master did not dare to do, for the chance would have been extremely good that the ship would be cast upon one of the many islands. He therefore elected to keep the wind on the port side and run through the typhoon. The wind and sea soon became more violent than the night before. It was awe-inspiring. For a couple of hours it blew hard, and then at about 1:30 A.M. there came a sudden lull--with no air stirring, with a calm sea, and with the barometer falling precipitately. The pressure on the ear drums was intense. II--"WE WERE FIGHTING A TYPHOON" It was plain that we were in the very center of the typhoon, and that our most severe battle with the elements was just ahead. Some time around 4 A.M. the wind again arose suddenly, and the fight was on. It soon became terrific and well over 100 miles an hour--estimated by the First Officer as between 125 and 130 miles--the worst thus far we had experienced. Now ensued a time of desperate peril that even a landlubber could appreciate. Many a prayer went up that night from lips that had not uttered one since the days of "Now I lay me down to sleep" at a mother's knee. Many a rough nature felt stirring within him thoughts and feelings that had been strangers many a year. The awful force and roar of the wind, the violent pitching and rolling, the absolute darkness outside, the puny efforts of the big, powerful ship and its apparent helplessness, added to the fact that we knew we were in an unknown position in a sea in many places uncharted and dotted with coral reefs and islands,--all convinced us that we were in the immediate presence of the Great Adventure and that only the guidance of the Divine Hand could succor us.