“Look out! Hold on for your lives, lads!” shouted the first mate.
Every one clung to whatever was nearest to him. One poor fellow was to leeward. There was no avoiding the sea, which, like a mountain topped with foam, struck the bows. The ship plunged into it, and for a few seconds I thought would never rise again. On swept the roaring torrent, deluging the deck; and had not the hatches been battened down, would have half filled her.
A loud, crashing sound followed, and when the water had passed over us nearly all the lee bulwarks were gone, and with them our shipmate who had been standing a minute before as full of life as any of us. He was not again seen, and must have gone down at once.
The captain was compelled at last to heave the ship to, and there we lay, now rising to the top of a sea, now sinking into the trough, with walls of water, half as high as the main-top, round us. The seas in the German Ocean and Bay of Biscay were nothing to be compared to those we encountered off the Horn, though, perhaps, equally dangerous.
As soon as I went below, I hurried to the side of Esdale. He asked what had happened. I told him.
“Some one was carried overboard?” he inquired.
“Yes,” I said. “Poor Jack Norris,” wondering how he knew it.
“And I shall soon follow him,” he replied.
His words proved true. That very night, as I came off my watch and was about to turn in, I heard my messmate utter my name in a low voice. I went to him.
“I’m going,” he whispered. “Good-bye, Peter; you’ll remember what I have said to you?”