A gray sea, a gray sky, and the Mid-Atlantic Ocean in September. Over the heaving waters the Merle, under reduced canvas, was staggering westward on the port-tack with a stiff southerly breeze. Jack, clad in his yellow oil-skins like the rest of the hands, was standing just outside the cockpit on the windward side of the yacht. Jerry was asleep below. Having had the early morning watch, he had turned in directly after breakfast. The captain glanced aloft uneasily, and wondered if they were going to encounter on their return such a gale as they had weathered while going over. He reluctantly admitted to himself that there was every appearance of dirty weather, and thought he had better step below to take a look at the glass.

He pushed back the companion, and descended. The cabin was stuffy and no warmer than the air without. The racks were on the table, and the lamps swung in erratic circles in their gimbals. The barometer, a beautifully finished instrument of the columnar type, was placed against the after-bulkhead of the saloon on the starboard beside a closet door, its slender length enclosed in bronze. It gyrated wildly, in unison with the Thom's list-indicator above it. Jack steadied the tube with his hand, and looked anxiously to see if the mercury had fallen.

"Good God!" he burst out.

At eight bells that morning the vernier of the glass had been set at 29.32. With staring eyes, Jack saw that now, little more than two hours later, the mercury had sunk to 27.09,—a drop portentous of a furious gale. For one brief moment, in the face of approaching danger, and filled with a quick sense of his great responsibility, he stood appalled. He put his hand to his forehead as if he were dizzy and found it hard to think.

"How's the glass, Jack?" asked a voice beside him. He turned with troubled eyes to see Tab in his pajamas, a freshly lighted cigarette between his fingers. "What's the trouble?" the mate demanded instantly, seeming bewildered at the captain's appearance.

"What brought you out here?" the captain retorted, though why he should have asked he could not have told.

"Heard you exclaiming. What's the trouble?"

"Look!" Jack answered, pointing to the glass.

"All that!" gasped Jerry.

"Get your togs on," was the only reply Jack offered. "Be quick, and come on deck."

Jerrold left him without a word, and padded off to his cabin. Jack reset the vernier, and went out. To his disturbed mind it seemed as if in the brief interval during which he had been below the whole appearance of nature had grown more ominous. In five minutes Jerry was with him.

"Well, Jack?"

"I've made up my mind what to do," the captain announced. "It's going to blow fit to take your hair out by the roots: that much is sure."

Jerry nodded soberly, and looked his friend straight in the eye.

"We'll have to lay-to before we see the end of this, and I'd rather do so at sea-anchor 'n any other way. What do you think?"

"That's right enough. I suppose we'd better make ready now?"

"We sha'n't have much time when it does come. We must get a mess of things together up for'ard fit to hold a liner. We'll need it."

Jack got the hands together around the winch forward, and set them at once, under his direction, to the making of the "sea-anchor." The spinnaker-boom and the two shorter boat-booms were first lashed firmly together with inch rope in a rough isosceles triangle.

"Now," Jack ordered, "fetch the old staysail, and bend it on in the frame."

"How are you going to ballast the thing?" asked Tab. "It'll float flat if you don't give it a sinker."

"I fancy the market-boat's killock would be about the right thing if we could get at it," Jack answered. "Do you know where"—

"Yes, yes," interrupted Jerry hastily. "It's with the rest of her gear. I'll get it." And he went aft.

Although the wind had not as yet increased in violence, Jack, standing as he did almost at the peak of the vessel, felt the motion much more than he had farther aft. The great gray-green seas heaved hard about the plunging yacht, and every now and then she ran bowsprit under. She was a rather dry boat, fortunately, of the "hollow bow" model, and in the fifteen or twenty minutes that the men had been working on the anchor, she had not taken any waves aboard. The spindrift, it is true, flew across her by the bucketful, but the men, dressed in their oilers, blinked the cold water out of their eyes and went on with their work. Before Jerry returned, however, as the crew were bending the old staysail to the triangular frame, the captain, to his consternation, saw that the Merle was just working her way up the breast of a mighty hill of water with all likelihood of burying herself in the rising wall of a wave ahead.

"'Ware water!" he shouted.

The men dropped their work and caught at whatever was nearest at hand. Some threw an arm about the bollard by the knighthead; some jumped for the winch; two men got a tight grip on the large ring-bolts by the port cat-heads; Jack himself leaped for the winch and put his right arm around the drum.

The Merle labored to the crest of the hill of water. It sank away beneath her instantly, and she shot down the slope of the wave into the trough of the sea with a headlong, staggering rush. Towering above her was the roughened, foam-blotched face of the succeeding wave. She tried bravely to climb it, but she was too near, the angle was too sharp; she could not so quickly recover from the impetus of her downward plunge. She seemed to tremble—to hesitate—for an instant, and then as if in the courage of despair, to leap forward with a jerk into the very midst of the flood as if she would force her way through its tons of swinging sea-water.

Jack went to the deck under the tremendous blow of the on-rushing wave as if he had been struck down by a thunderbolt. He felt the shock, the biting cold of the water, and then it seemed as if a giant had gripped him with hands of ice and were trying to wrench him from his hold. He clung on, drenched, bewildered, desperate, until he wondered if his arm would be pulled out of its socket. He had a stifling sensation of having been for hours without air; he felt as if he were being dragged by some terrible power swiftly through the sea miles below the surface. On a sudden he again felt the deck under him, and opened his eyes. The Merle had forced her way through the wave, and they were again free. He gasped, spluttered, and rose to his feet, the water streaming from him. Inside the bulwarks to starboard the green, foam-mixed brine washed about knee-deep, and was pouring with a hoarse gurgling out of the scuppers forward. The "anchor" had been swept bodily aft as far as the foremast, and there was jammed between the mast itself and the weather-shrouds. Drenched and cursing, the men squelched their way aft, dislodged the structure, and dragged it forward again. Luckily the mishap, really a slight one of twenty seconds' duration, had wrought no damage which could not be easily repaired, and so the crew took up their work where they had left it.

Jerry reappeared with the killock of the market-boat just as they got into place once more.

"Did you get wet?" he asked cheerily, with a broad grin which showed that he saw what had happened.

"What do you think?" burst out the captain hotly. "No; I got dry, damn it!"

"Did you really, though! Well, I thought you looked damp."

Jack paid this boyish jest with a word that was sharp and a look that was too near a grin not to take the sting from it. He took the killock that Jerry had brought, and had the men make it fast to the lower point of the kite-like frame where the short boat-booms met. To the ends of the long spinnaker-boom he fastened lengths of strong inch Manilla, and a piece somewhat shorter to the point where the killock was attached. The captain meant that the "sea-anchor," when in the water, should ride not exactly vertical, but that by the shorter line the weighted point should be lifted a little toward the yacht as the Merle dragged back on it. In the end of each of these lines a bow-line was bent, and through the bights of them he had the rode bent and made fast. The whole contrivance was then like a triangular kite weighted at the point made by the shorter sides, and held by lines from the three corners joined on the rode, which corresponded to the string. When the work was finished Jack inspected it all carefully, and examined the fastenings.

"It's a rough enough concern," he said to Jerry; "but it's stanch, and if we have to use it, it'll do good service. Make it fast," he added to the men. "Put on a couple of strong gaskets for stoppers. Come on, Tab; I don't want another ducking."

They went aft to the cockpit, and the captain started to go below.

"I'll just take another look at that glass," he said. "It's well to keep a"—

"Look!" cried Jerry suddenly, seizing him by the arm, and pointing away to the southward.

Jack's eyes followed the mate's arm. Afar off on the gloomy horizon, the black sea below and the gray sky above were in one place welded together by a wall of impenetrable haze. It was not much more than a spot, but Jack at a glance took in its full significance, and knew that before the Merle was a struggle that would try her strength and his seamanship to the very utmost. He opened his mouth to speak, and closed his lips firmly without a word. He looked a moment at the inky mist, and then dashed below. In a couple of minutes he reappeared with a grim look on his usually genial face.

"Jerry," he said hurriedly, "I've been down and tried the storm-card on the chart. If we keep on as she's going, we'll fetch up plumb in the centre of this mess. The Merle wouldn't live there half an hour."

"Well?" questioned Jerry. His face was sober, and had about it a suggestion of a big, serious dog that watches its troubled master. "What can we do?"

"There is only one thing to do," Jack responded quickly, but with absolute decision. "The centre bears southwesterly,—that's why our wind's hauled 'round. We've got to put about and run into the heart of that greasy streak yonder. It'll be a tough job, but not so bad as if we were farther westward. When we get the wind westerly, we'll lay to. If we do anything else, we'll be swept into the centre, sure's fate."

"Can't we run it out?" Jerry asked desperately. "It'll be tremendous! That blow we had coming over'll be pale beside it. Think, man!"

"I have," Jack said shortly. "Ready 'bout ship!" he shouted.

The men sprang to their places, although Jack could see that they threw swift glances of surprise at him as they did so. The evidence, slight as it was, that he was acting alone, and that he must see farther and more wisely than the men under him, accustomed as they were to the sea, imparted a new ring of command to his voice as he gave the necessary orders. With some difficulty and with much uproar of booming canvas and slatting ropes, the schooner came about, and Jack had her headed straight for the black spot on the horizon.

Jack hurried on preparations for the storm before them. He had sail taken in and double-reefed; the "spitfire" jib set in place of the larger forestaysail, and tarpaulins battened over the skylights. He put the yacht as completely as possible in heavy-weather trim, to meet the gale scudding along over the black sea toward them.

He was none too soon, for the storm was not long in coming. The gray sky above the yacht grew darker and darker, the sea about her more and more "cobbly." The wind freshened rapidly, and veered more toward the west. The Merle sailed on gallantly, the green waves breaking against her weather shoulder, and the spindrift flying down the decks as she slashed her way to windward. The tops of the great seas, as they heaved themselves skyward, were snatched off by the gale, and sped in white sheets down the wind.

Jack was standing in the cockpit with Jerry. He was watching the weather narrowly, and now and then, with a brief word or two, gave the steersmen—for the wheel needed two of them—a command or a warning. The force of the gale so increased that at the end of an hour and a half the mainsail, though triple-reefed, was got down and furled, and the forestaysail, which had been unbent to give place to the spitfire, was set on the boom as a trysail.

It had come on to rain, and the big drops were driven along almost in horizontal lines. When they struck the face Jack felt as if he had been pelted with hailstones. Mixed with the flying spindrift they filled the air as if with a mist, blinding and fierce.

Suddenly, as the yacht was dipping into the trough of a long sea, a strong gust listed her over so that aft the green water rose on the decks to within a fathom of the cockpit combings. A sharp report burst out above all the roaring of the wind and the multitudinous clamor of the waters. Jack looked up to see the trysail streaming out in tattered ribbons, writhing and twisting like pale snakes in mad fury. The sight inflamed him like a personal insult flung at him by the storm. He broke out with a cry, and with a great oath swore he would see the Merle through in spite of everything.

"Tab," he shouted in the mate's ear, "get along forward on that sea-anchor! Stand by to launch it. We don't want any more of this!"

He saw Jerry gather the port watch,—for all the men had been on deck for two hours past, clinging to whatever was nearest and alternately watching the storm and the captain,—and with them scrabble forward, making way by the help of whatever could be grasped. Their difficulty in getting forward was to Jack like a sudden realization of the danger they were in, and made him for the moment think of the men, whereas he had before been conscious of nothing but of the yacht herself. He saw the men gather about the "sea-anchor," swaying and pitching with the motion of the bow, and Jerry turn to look for his signal. The yacht was carrying such a strong lee-helm that the steersmen could not keep her head to the wind, and Jack shouted and gesticulated frantically to Jerry to get down the storm-jib, while at the same time he ordered the starboard watch to unstop the mainsail. He was in deadly fear lest the vessel should get clean broadside to the wind and that the decks would be swept.

"Unstop the mainsail!" he roared. "Show the peak! Douse the jib!"

Again he motioned to Jerry, knowing that his voice would not be heard forward. He saw Tab pause a moment, and then wave his arm in reply. To his utter dismay, however, he saw the mate and the men with him stoop, get hold of the "sea-anchor," and, tugging and stumbling, begin to haul it up to the weather side. It flashed on Jack that his gestures had been misunderstood, and his order to get down the jib mistaken for a command to launch the "anchor." With a sickening plunge the Merle at that moment coasted down a mighty wave, fell off, and lay broadside to the seas. For a second he felt as if everything was lost.

"Smartly!" he roared to the starboard watch, who were working for their lives upon the main-boom.

He gave them one glance, and started to rush forward, running recklessly along, and feeling for his sheath-knife as he went. A quick lurch of the yacht to port flung him off his feet, and shot him forward and to his right. He instinctively flung out his hand, and clutched something metallic.

"'Ware water!" he mumbled, half stunned.

A green shadow curled over him. There was a crashing roar to leeward. He felt the yacht stagger and tremble, and suddenly and with an odd mental twist he remembered vividly an earthquake shock he had once felt at Patras. The shadow disappeared, a little water came slap! on his oilskin jacket between the shoulders. The rest of the wave—tons and tons of green water—had curled itself over him, and crashed on the decks to leeward.

He got to his feet unsteadily, and with a queer singing in his ears ran forward. He threw a quick look to port as he ran. The force of the sea had evidently been heaviest amidships, for he saw that for thirty feet on the lee beam the rail had been burst out between the fore and main rigging; two boats were gone, and the skylights, broken, yawned blackly. Jack groaned inwardly, but did not stop. Pitching and staggering, he made his way to the foremast. A sudden fling of the yacht threatened to make him, as he afterward put it, "overshoot the mark" and tumble past the halyards. Fortunately, however, he checked himself by catching at the foretopsail-clewline as he was being pitched by, and he clung to it desperately. He laid hold of the spitfire halyard. One quick glance at the turns about the pin in the rack told him how much time he should save by cutting the rope, and with a swift backdrawing of the sharp sheath-knife he severed it. The fall of the halyard flew up aloft, playfully dealing him a smart rap on the chin as it went; the sail ran down in thunder, and blew away in shreds. The Merle began to rise, and Jack felt a thrill of joyful relief to see that she was coming up into the wind. The men aft had showed the peak of the mainsail, and the schooner was feeling its effects.

A few yards forward, Jerry and the port watch were still toiling over the "sea-anchor." Twice they had tried to set it in position for launching, and each time wind and sea had overmastered them. Jack, in an agony lest the structure should be launched before the yacht was laid about on the other tack, or at least so near the wind that the awkward contrivance could be got over the bows to port, stumbled forward shouting.

"To port!" he roared. "Get it over to port!"

He gripped Jerry by the arm.

"The wrong tack!" he bellowed in the mate's ear. "Run it over to leeward, and put it over when I wave my arm. Watch sharp!"

"Aye!" shouted Tab, but Jack was already gone.

Castleport stumbled aft much as he had gone forward, now climbing laboriously up hill, now leaning back and struggling to keep himself from rushing headlong down the sloping deck with an impetus that would have carried him overboard. When he reached the cockpit, he dropped inside almost spent.

"Back the helm every time she rises!" he called to the men at the wheel. "We want her to fall over!"

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Now, then,—over with her!" he cried, as the yacht rose.

The men gave her all they dared. The effect was imperceptible.

"Hold her!" shouted Jack.

At the risk of their lives, the two helmsmen held her as the schooner slid down the big slope of the wave, shivering as she went. As she rose, the captain, with a laughing heart, saw that she would make it. He tore off his "sou'-wester," and waved it frantically to Tab forward. Jerry threw up his arm in reply; the big "sea-anchor" rose from the deck, and went out on the port side.

"Helm amidships!" sang out Jack.

"Aye, aye, sir."

The Merle began to drift back.

"Watch along!" the captain roared again. "Gaskets on the mainsail!"

The starboard watch began to wrestle with the heavy canvas which they had partially freed from its bonds so short a time before. The sail was made snug, and the Merle dragged back on her "anchor," and though she plunged and tugged, pitched and rolled, still kept her sharp nose to the wind. Through the mist of the stinging brine which the wind drove down the decks in sheets, the captain saw the hands forward pay out some forty fathoms of scope, and then, man by man, work their way aft.

"I'm awfully sorry I—I made such a mess," Tab shouted in the captain's ear as he reached him.

"It's all right," returned Jack, aglow with a wild exultation. "It's all right! No matter."

The ominous belt of opaque mist which they had so shortly before seen on the horizon was now all about them. The Merle and her crew were enveloped in a shroud of rushing rain. It drove before the blast in incredible torrents, and with a force that made them catch their breaths chokingly whenever they faced it. The seas increased to frightful size. Even to the sailors, bred on the sea, it seemed hardly possible that the schooner could live in such surges. The cockpit, although self-bailing, was kept flooded; in it the water, sloshing about with the motion of the schooner, was as high as the transoms. The uproar of the wind, singing on the ropes strung by its own force to tautness, was like the shrieking of an immense and untuned harp. The crash of the waves sounded like a continuous cannonade all about the yacht. The mingling of sea and air produced a vertigo, as if everything was resolving again into its original chaos. Yet in the midst of it all Jack felt his blood sing in his veins with pure joy of the battle.

Suddenly the captain remembered the broken skylights. He splashed out of the cockpit, where he stood almost waist-deep in the jumping water, steadied himself by the combings, and started forward.

"Pumps!" he shouted. "Come!"

He waved his arm to the men, and the yellow-clad figures detached themselves in the mist and blurring rain from the points of vantage to which they had clung, and dumb, obedient, followed him.

The pumps were just abaft the foremast, and were of the semi-rotary sort. The bars were fitted, and two of the men, swinging themselves back and forth, back and forth, with a dull and dreary monotony, began pumping as if they had become parts of a machine. A steady flow of water came from the waste-pipe in a continuous stream. It spread out over the deck to port and to starboard as the yacht swayed. It was full of bubbles and flecks of froth, and was a sickly yellow in hue.

Jack set the rest of the men to stretch new tarpaulins over the gaping skylights, and then he went below to look at the glass. Drenched, bruised, cold from his long fight with the storm and the hours which had gone by without his having had food, he found himself, now that for the moment action was not imperative, seized with a sort of terror at the perils he had gone through. The instant reflection that worse might be yet to come restored his courage. He could face whatever might befall as long as he might act.

The sight which met him in the once trig cabin was sufficiently dispiriting. A thin sheet of water swashed softly about over the Turkish carpet. It chuckled in dark places as if sentient and fully aware of the impropriety of its being there. A locker door had burst open, and was banging maddeningly. Farther forward, in the dark staterooms, similar noises could be heard, with sounds which suggested that all sorts of small things were being flung about. Everything was sopped with sea-water and drenched by the beating rain: the transom-cushions, two of which were skating about the cabin with the wicker deck-chairs; the books on their shelves; the lockers, the mirrors, the sheathing, down which large drops ran in dizzying zigzags,—in short, everything. The sight gave Jack a feeling of discouragement worse than anything on deck—even the tearing away of the bulwarks—had been able to produce. He felt as if the cruel old ocean were mouthing the schooner as a beast breaks the bones of its prey before devouring it. He drew in his breath with fierce resolution, all his combative spirit aroused to fight to the last gasp, and made his stumbling way to the barometer. He steadied it with his hand, and read it. It stood at 27.04. This was a drop of only .05 since his last observation, and the captain's face cleared a little. If the glass had practically stopped falling, as apparently it had, the hardest part of the gale would come soon, and be speedily over. The old weather saw came into his head,—

The relief, slight as it was, affected him so strongly that he almost smiled. He reflected that the Merle was as well prepared to meet it as under the circumstances she could be, and he had no real doubt of her ability to ride it out, unless some unexpected accident disabled the "sea-anchor."

When he came on deck he was greeted by Tab, who had taken charge in his absence, and who asked eagerly the state of the glass. Jack told him, and drawing him into the companionway, where they could escape the wind enough to talk, he added his reasons for thinking that a short time might see them through the worst.

"How are things below?" asked the mate.

"Look!" the captain answered, with a sweep of his hand.

Tab bent down and peered into the dismantled cabin.

"The devil!" he cried in dismay.

"Precisely—but it might be worse," returned Jack; "but by George, Tab!" he burst out with sudden vehemence, "I—I'm glad I haven't got all this to do over again. You don't know—can't imagine the strain of this sort of thing."

"Does your conscience get up like a cat with the wind?" laughed Jerry.

"No, Tab," Jack answered soberly, "but the men, you know, and thinking I took them into this when I'd no right to. Oh, rot! No matter, only I'm jolly glad I ran off with the Merle before I realized all this. I couldn't bring myself to do it again for"—

"Come on deck, Jacko," Tab said, after a brief silence in which with eyes cast down awkwardly he had waited for the captain to continue. "I know how you feel, but thank the Lord there's work to be done, and we'll fight through all right. Besides, Gonzague's forward getting a ration of some sort. We can't afford to miss that."

He put out his hand, and Jack grasped it appreciatively, with a half-conscious thanksgiving for the comfort of a friend.

"Right you are!" the captain said heartily. "We're both of us ready for a feed, I fancy."

And out into the storm they went again, buoyant and ready.