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Those who had been trawling all day hauled their trawls on board; and those which had been brought up, lifted their anchors, and all made sail together.

Before midnight a fierce gale was blowing from the westward, shifting now from the south-west, now from the north-west, and creating a heavy cross-sea. The fishing-vessels took different directions. Some stood to the north, some towards the south, endeavouring, as best they could, to beat up against the gale; but they were quickly dispersed here and there, so that the seamen on board the Sea-gull, with which we have to do, when they looked out into the gloom around, could not discover a single sail near them. Dark seas, with white, foaming crests, rose up on every side, threatening to fall over on the deck of the little vessel, and send her to the bottom. Now she rose to the summit of one of them now she sunk down into the deep trough between them; tumbling and pitching as if the sport of their fury. The lightning flashed vividly; the wind howled in the rigging; the waves roared, and ever and anon struck the vessel as if about to batter in her sides, sending the spray flying over her deck, wetting the crew (who stood holding on to the bulwarks or rigging) through and through.

There was a loud crash, followed by a groan: the mizen yard had parted, and, falling, had struck the old master, Captain Snow, to the deck. His men raised him up; he could not speak. He was carried below, where his injuries could be looked to.

“Robby, my son, do you and Bill Cuffe go below, and look after the old man; this is not a night for boys like you to be on deck,” said the elder Starling, who now took the command.

The boys gladly obeyed. Bill Cuffe proposed turning into their berths to go to sleep; but Robby said, “No! we were told to look after the captain.”

The men, by a sickly light of a lantern, examined the captain’s hurts, as he lay in his berth, but though they could not discover that any limb was broken, they soon saw that he was beyond their skill. They had, too, to hurry on deck to help repair the damage to the rigging. Soon after, Robby and Bill Cuffe heard the men on deck battening down the hatches; it was a sign that things were becoming even more serious than at first. The bulkheads below creaked; the seas thumped and thumped against the sides, and the Sea-gull tumbled and pitched about in every conceivable manner.

“What’s going to happen? ain’t we all going to the bottom?” asked Bill. “What shall we do, Robby?”

“Do our duty, Bill, whatever happens, as the missionary told us this morning; and pray to God to take care of us all aboard here,” answered Robby. “We’ve now to try to help the captain; I think I hear him speaking.”

The boys went to the captain’s side. He had returned to consciousness. “What’s happened, boy?” he asked: “I can’t move hand or foot.” Robby told him. “God’s will be done,” he murmured. “Your father’ll do his best–he’s a good seaman. He went to service with us this morning. I wish all had gone.”

While he was speaking, the vessel received a more furious blow; then there was a rushing noise of water overhead, followed by loud crashes and a few faint shrieks, and then the vessel seemed to bound upwards, and no other sound was heard but that of the seas which washed against the sides. The boys clung to each other in terror; something dreadful had happened, they had been long enough at sea to know that. They dreaded to ask each other; yet what could those shrieks mean? There were no sound of footsteps on deck; the movement of the vessel was different; she no longer went ahead, but lay tossed about by the sea.