The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1904-09-21

tie sigh in the distance rising to
hiss.
"All hands lie down and hold on!"
came sharp order from the quarter
deck, but most of us had obeyed be-
fore 1t was uttered. We knew what
that sound meant, and down we went,
hanging on to the first solid thing that
came to hand. The hiss rose to
scream, the scream deepened into
roar, the armament split from hori-
zon, as though the sword of the Arch.
angel had clovened it through. Then
came a crash of thunder like the
trump of God, and then the heavens
and the sea seemed to come together,
and for the next few minutes, which
seemed like hours, we were fighting
and struggling and gasping for bretah
with a roar of wind in our ears and
a choking of water in our mouths. The
sails went out of the bolt ropes like
so many rags CT cotton, and the stanch
frigate-built ship heeled over as
though a squall had struck her under
full sail. For certain uncounted sec
onds we hung between time and eter.
nifty, and then the blast passed. She
righted, and the water flowed off her
decks through the swilling scuppers,
and man who was holding on the
main fife rail near to me said, as he
got up and shock himself:
We'll, if that amt the end of Bill,
1t - we'll ought to be-"
But it wasn't. Bills end was many
days off yet
The pampero went as IL had come
out of silence and darkness back into
silence and darkness again. The mer-
curry in the barometer rose to its nor
NAL level, and the next midday saw the
old Lincolnshire STOPPING and swaying
under every stitch that she could car
ry, beneath the cloud-dappled skies of
the region of the southeast trades. And
so, day after day, we went north
eastward over the lonely sea till the
good wind began to die away into
clouds joined together into a dense
brown pail, and the rains came down,
and the waters that were above the
armament flowed in unceasing streams
into those that were below 1t.
After that we drifted with the cur
rents and were driven by sudden and
fitful squalls from this quarter and
that into what is perhaps the most
gbastly and terrible region of the
world, the zone of equatorial calms.
The water is without a ripple, the
heavens without breath. The tar
bubbles up between the planks, and
the drinking water gets warmer and
warmer, and the boiled pork and salt
horse grow more loathsome every day
and then other ships drift like
ghosts out of the night into the same
area of elemental death. and so it
goes on.
But something else goes on also, and
that is work. Now no good seaman
ever objected to work in its proper
time and seasons; but Of all things alb
horrent to the real deepsea sailors
mind the most hateful is the sailors
Eleventh Commandment.
Six days shalt thou work and do all
that thou art able,
Ana on the seventh holystone the
decks and scrape the cable.
regret to say that cur skipper was
one of those misguided captains who
believed in this ordinance, and on the
first Sunday in the calms, which was
our sixth day in that dismal region,
he had the watches alternately work.
ing at bending new sails and generally
getting ready for the run home. II
took a whole Saturday and Sunday
and when the work was over Bill
looked up at the newly bent sails and
cursed them with a solemn elouuence
which somehow seemed curiously suit
able to the miserable monotony of our
surroundings. But this was not held
among us in the forcastle for a good
omen. We had come to know that
when Bill cursed anything 1t gener.
ally came to bad end, and that Is
just what these sails did.
Five days later we drifted out of the
doldrums and on the edge of the north.
east trades, and then the good old shiI
settled down to her work again, AM
we went ripping across the short seas
and on the second day fell into com,
pany with our long-lost sister ship, the
Somersetshire. Her we raced neck ant
neck for two days and nights. and OF
the third morning. just as she wa.
leading us by quarter of mile, W,
saw her fore-topgallant.mast sway for
ward with one of her plunges ant
come down amidst pillows of smoth
ering canvas, and so we left her.