1 82 HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 



kimonos, looked more like expectant bathers than sailors. 

 But, good swimmers as they all were, they knew very well 

 how little that would avail them in such a sea, so that dress 

 at such a time was a matter of little importance. Judging 

 by experience, death under such circumstances, or rather 

 its anticipation, is not so hard as it is generally considered. 

 The struggle must necessarily be short, and, numbed with 

 cold and fatigue, the final restfulness cannot be unwelcome, 

 and thought is all concentrated in regrets for the sorrow 

 of tho: ? e that are left behind. Especially is such the case 

 where the sea does not give up her dead, and hope, often 

 unreasoning, keeps sorrow alive. 



Shortly after midnight the rain began to descend in 

 torrents, but without having any influence on the wind, 

 while adding to our discomfort, as it cut our faces like the 

 lashings of a whip. At one o'clock the foresail, which we 

 had been so anxiously watching, split into ribbons with the 

 fierceness of the wind. We then set the jib, a compara- 

 tively new sail, but it could not stand five minutes before 

 it also was split into rags. The mainsail, already close 

 reefed in readiness, we dare not set, as it was now our last 

 hope and could only be used at the very direst extremity. 

 Indeed, no canvas could have stood against such a wind, so 

 at the mercy of the wind and sea we drifted bodily towards 

 the lee shore. Baker never left the wheel, trying to ease her 

 as much as possible. But he, who was by far the best sailor 

 amongst us, had added to our anxiety by declaring some 

 time previously that what he principally feared was our 

 being capsized, a by-no-means unlikely contingency, for the 

 wind and current together had raised a tremendous cross 

 sea that raged around us in strange, unwavelike shapes of 

 mounds and pyramids that tossed us up or sank beneath 

 us as, unbalanced on their crests, we pitched and rolled 

 until we thought the masts were going overboard. Every 

 now and then some great pyramid of water rose alongside 

 whose toppling summit was seized by the hurricane and 

 fell, flooding us with water. At last the ever-falling glass 



