230 KAMSCHATKA. [chap. 



Just at this time an accident occurred which cast a gloom over 

 the whole ship. The jaw-rope had carried away, and Charles Le 

 Gonidec, a Frenchman from Havre, and one of our best hands, was 

 engaged in overhauling the throat halyards when, getting hold of 

 the wrong part, and the rope overhauling too rapidly, he came down 

 with a run, and hung suspended for a moment about fifteen feet 

 above the deck. The ship was rolling heavily, and a sudden lurch 

 to port loosening his grasp, he fell, and striking the bulwark, was 

 overboard in an instant. From the very moment of the occurrence 

 it was evident that no human power could save him. No boat 

 could have been launched in such a sea, and although we shortened 

 sail and put the hehn over without delay, we could not even get 

 the vessel head to wind, and in spite of the engines being at full 

 speed, were driven back into the wash of our own screw\ The 

 spin-drift on the water was so great, and the weather so thick, that 

 objects could not be seen at the distance of the ship's length, and 

 the poor fellow had been lost sight of immediately. Eeluctantly 

 therefore we gave up all hope, and the safety of the yacht having 

 to be considered, — for we ran considerable risk of having our decks 

 swept, — she was again kept away, her course being altered to S.W. 

 byS. 



The loss of a man at sea always comes with more or less of a 

 shock to the most thoughtless of us, even if we be merely passengers 

 on an ordinary liner. But when it occurs among those who have 

 been comrades for months together, and we realise that there will 

 be a gap among the familiar faces that greet us as we walk forward 

 to the fo'c'sle every morning, we feel it far more than many who 

 regard a sailor as being merely an animated unit of the ship's 

 machinery would imagine. It was long, I think, before any of us 

 began to grow accustomed to the loss of poor " French Charlie." 



We had other things to think of at the moment, however. At 

 10 A.M. the wind had backed still further to E.N.E., and the glass 

 was falling more rapidly. We concluded that we were probably 

 not far from the storm centre, and a couple of hours later, as we 



