The Winkelried received the shock at a moment when the lee-side of her broad deck was wallowing in the trough, and its weather was protruded on the summit of a swell.  The wind howled when it struck the pent limits, as if angered at being thwarted, and there was a roar under the wide gangways, resembling that of lions.  The reeling vessel was raised in a manner to cause those or board to believe it about to be lifted bodily from the water, but the ceaseless rolling of the element restored the balance.  Maso afterwards affirmed that nothing but this accidental position, which formed a sort of lee, prevented all in the bark from being swept from the deck, before the first gust of the hurricane.

Sigismund had heard the heart-rending appeal of Adelheid, and, notwithstanding the awful strife of the elements and the fearful character of the night, he alone breasted the shock on his feet.  Though aided by a rope, and bowed like a reed, his herculean frame trembled under the shock, in a way to render even his ability to resist seriously doubtful.  But, the first blast expended, he sprang to the gangway, and leaped into the cauldron of the lake unhesitatingly, and yet in the possession of all his faculties.  He was desperately bent on saving a life so dear to Adelheid, or on dying in the attempt.

Maso had watched the crisis with a seaman’s eye, a seaman’s resources, and a seaman’s coolness.  He had not refused to quit his feet, but kneeling on one knee, he pressed the tiller down, lashed it, and clinging to the massive timber, faced the tempest with the steadiness of a water-god.  There was sublimity in the intelligence, deliberation, and calculating skill, with which this solitary, unknown, and nearly hopeless, mariner obeyed his professional instinct, in that fearful concussion of the elements, which, loosened from every restraint, now appeared abandoned to their own wild and fierce will.  He threw aside his cap, pushed forward his thick but streaming locks, as veils to protect his eyes, and watched the first encounter of the wind, as the wary but sullen lion keeps his gaze on the hostile elephant.  A grim smile stole across his features, when he felt the vessel settle again into its watery bed, after that breathless moment in which there had been reason to fear it might actually be lifted from its proper element.  Then the precaution, which had seemed so useless and incomprehensible to others, came in play.  The bark made a fearful whirl from the spot where it had so long lain, yielding to the touch of the gust like a vane turning on its pivot, while the water gurgled several streaks on deck.  But the cables were no sooner taut than the numerous anchors resisted, and brought the bark head to wind.  Maso felt the yielding of the vessel’s stern, as she swung furiously round, and he cheered aloud.  The trembling of the timbers, the dashing against the pointed beak, and that high jet of water, which shot up over the bows and fell heavily on the forecastle, washing aft in a flood, were so many evidences that the cables were true.  Advancing from his post, with some such dignity as a master of fence displays in the exercise of his art, he shouted for his dog.