of water like Niagara Falls, jumbled up, falling, smashing together. If it hit us square we'd vanish.

Saxton stood near me. He passed me a rope and signed for me to make myself fast. I couldn't do it. I must be free. I thought of Mary, below, and shook. What must she feel? We couldn't get down to her now, and that made me sick. Saxton fastened the rope around me. He put his mouth to my ear and shouted, "You never could hold without it!"

I let him do what he liked. All desire to do anything myself, one way or the other, was rattled out of me.

"How is she?" he shrieked again. I could just hear him at a one-inch range.

"All right,"! said.

"Make a little prayer to Himmel," he says, "for here it comes!"

Here it come. Something that looked like the Atlantic up-ended loomed over the bows. The wind struck me flat on my back, in one grand crash of snapping wood, roaring water, thunder, and the fall of the pillars of the world. The ocean swept over me, yet I rose high in the air. I felt that the Matilda was turning a back somersault. The rope nearly cut me in half. Just when my lungs were pumping so I couldn't hold my breath a heart-beat longer, the wind suddenly cut over my face. Man! It hit like a fire-engine stream! I turned and swallowed some of it before we went down into the deep again. After that, it was plain disorderly conduct. Part of the time I was playing at home, a little boy again, and part of the time I was having a hard time trying to sleep in strange lands. But the next thing I can swear to is that the moon was shining, and the Matilda jumping like a horse. In spite of the aches and pains all over me, I just lay still for a minute and let it soak in that I was still on board this pretty good old world. Next, I thought of Mary and the rest of them and scrambled to my feet. I was dizzy—a three-inch cut across the top of my head gave reason enough for that, let alone the rest of the racket—and one eye was swelled shut. Otherwise, barring a sprained arm, a raw circle around me where the rope cut, a black-and-blue spot the size of a ham on my right leg, and all the skin off my knuckles, I was the same person.

Saxton got himself up. We stared at each other.

"Hello!" says he.

"Hello!" says I.

"Well, what the devil are you doing alive?" he says. He meant it, too. It seemed to 

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