She was scudding under close-reefed maintopsail, and, from her sluggish movements, was evidently very much overloaded, or, what I thought more probable, had a great deal of water in her. I was the more inclined to this opinion from the peculiar character of her motions.
As she rose on the back of a sea, her stern seemed at first to be pinned down, as it were, until it appeared as though the following wave would run clean over her; but gradually her stern rose until it was a considerable height above the water, whilst her bow in its turn seemed weighed down, as would be the case with a large body of water rushing from aft forward.
They evidently saw our light, for a faint hail of ”— ahoy!” came down the wind to us from her.
“In distress and wants assistance, by the look of it,” remarked Bob. “But, poor chaps, it’s little of that we can give ’em. Heaven and ’arth! look at that, Harry.”
As he spoke, the ship, which was rushing forward furiously on the back of a sea, suddenly sheered wildly to port, until she lay broadside-to; the crest of the sea overtook her, and, breaking on board her in one vast volume of wildly flashing foam, threw her down upon her beam-ends, and, as it swept over her, her mast declined more and more towards the water, until it lay submerged.
Then, as we gazed in speechless horror at the dreadful catastrophe, a loud, piercing shriek rang out clear and shrill above the hoarse diapason of the howling tempest. She rolled completely bottom upwards, and then disappeared.
“Broached to, and capsized!” ejaculated we both in the same breath.
“Jump below, Bob, and rouse up a coil of line, whilst I get the life-buoys ready,” exclaimed I, after a single moment’s pause to collect my scattered faculties.
In an instant I had all four of the buoys ready, and two of them bent on to the longest rope-ends I could lay my hands on, and, in another, that glorious Bob appeared with a coil of ratline on his shoulder and a lighted blue-light in his hand.
The stops were cut and the ends of the coil cleared in no time, and the two remaining buoys bent on, while Bob held the blue-light aloft at arm’s length, for the double purpose of throwing the light as far as possible over the water, and also to indicate our whereabouts to any strong swimmer who might be struggling for his life among the mountain surges, and to guide him to our tiny ark of refuge.