And on through the wild dark night and surging sea the poor _London_ drove; when disaster upon disaster fell upon her with crushing weight. At half-past ten a terrific sea broke over the port-gangway, and what the sailors graphically called a mountain of water descended almost perpendicularly over the hatch of the engine-room. That hatch, as we have already said, was deemed strong enough to keep out any sea that might ever dash over a ship. Altogether it weighed about a ton and a half, and it measured 12 ft. by 9 ft. It was glazed with plate glass half an inch thick, and there were gratings of galvanized iron over the glass, and the bars were three-quarters of an inch thick. Yet, although thus strongly built and brass fastened, that mass of water, which descended almost perpendicularly, dashed through the hatchway, down which it threw violently two men, and, literally smashing every thing in its way, immediately flooded the engine-room with water. Mr. Jones, the first engineer, ill though he was, immediately ran from his berth, and descended to the engine-room, where he found Mr. Greenhill standing by the engines. The engine-room was flooding, and a body of water was passing down the hatchway. The hatchway had been swept clean away, and there was now nothing to prevent the rushing in of the sea. Of all calamities, this was the one most to be deplored: the ship’s carpenter could do nothing in the way of repairing, and yet down they must all go, and that speedily, unless something was done, for at every sea the vessel shipped, the water in the engine-room was rising higher and higher.