18 Star anfr Meatbet Gossip 



of them expected to set foot on shore again. He 

 described the waves as the queerest he had ever 

 experienced ; they spurted into the air twice the height 

 of the funnel. How the men kept the fires going no 

 one seemed to know clearly ; once they were quenched 

 nothing could have saved the tug and her crew. Sea 

 after sea flooded the stokehole, and all hands worked 

 unceasingly to get the water passed up in buckets. 

 When I went down into it the cinders were knee- 

 deep. 



One golden afternoon, when the bay had fallen as 

 quiet as a lake, I saw a waterlogged Norwegian barque 

 towed into port. Her main and mizzen masts had 

 gone ; so, too, had her foretopmast. The jagged 

 stumps of the missing masts protruded gauntly a few 

 feet above the deck. A trawler had the vessel in tow, 

 and as she passed through the lock I scrambled aboard 

 of her. Her decks felt like pulp to the tread. Little of 

 her bulwarks remained ; they had been carried away 

 by the great seas, and also, no doubt by the falling 

 spars. How she had kept afloat with her decks 

 almost awash was a mystery until it transpired that 

 she was timber-laden. 



The deck-house, always so conspicuous a feature of 

 Scandinavian timber ships, was left standing, but the 

 doors had disappeared and the interior was stripped 

 bare . A prison cell could not have been more uninviting 

 than that skeleton of a deck-house. It was clear that 

 the seas had played hide-and-seek in and out of it at 

 will ; and while bursting continually over the crippled 

 vessel, as over a log, they had made a clean sweep of 

 the deck cargo, not a stick of which remained. 



Those who were left of the crew were visibly affected. 



