“Don’t let her head fall off any, Heck,” I cried.  “Jam her over to the eastward as much as you can, even if the sea comes into her.  We can keep her clear with our hats.  If we drift past we’re gone!”

As we approached the bark the light grew rapidly brighter:  but I did not realise how near we were until the lantern, which was hanging in the ship’s fore-rigging, swung for an instant behind the jib-stay, and the vessel’s illuminated cordage suddenly came out in delicate tracery against the black sky, less than a hundred yards away.

“There she is!” shouted Sandford.  “We’re close on her!”

The bark was pitching furiously to her anchors, and as we drifted rapidly down upon her we could hear the hoarse roar of the gale through her rigging, and see a pale gleam of foam as the sea broke in sheets of spray against her bluff bows.

“Shall I try to round to abreast of her?” cried Heck to me, “or shall I go bang down on her?”

“Don’t take any chances,” I shouted.  “Better strike her, and go to pieces alongside, than miss her and drift past.  Make ready now to hail her—­all together—­one,—­two,—­three!  Bark aho-o-y!  Stand by to throw us a line!”

But no sound came from the huge black shadow under the pitching lantern save the deep bass roar of the storm through the cordage.

We gave one more fierce, inarticulate cry as the dark outline of the bark rose on a sea high above our heads; and then, with a staggering shock and a great crash, the boat struck the ship’s bow.

What happened in the next minute I hardly know.  I have a confused recollection of being thrown violently across a thwart in a white smother of foam; of struggling to my feet and clutching frantically at a wet, black wall, and of hearing some one shout in a wild, despairing voice:  “Watch ahoy!  We’re sinking!  For God’s sake throw us a line!”—­but that is all.

The water-logged sloop seesawed up and down past the bark’s side, one moment rising on a huge comber until I could almost grasp the rail, and the next sinking into a deep hollow between the surges, far below the line of the copper sheathing.  We tore the ends of our finger-nails off against the ship’s side in trying to stop the boat’s drift, and shouted despairingly again and again for help and a line; but our voices were drowned in the roar of the gale, there was no response, and the next sea carried us under the bark’s counter.  I made one last clutch at the smooth, wet planks; and then, as we drifted astern past the ship, I abandoned hope.

The sloop was sinking rapidly,—­I was already standing up to my knees in water,—­and in thirty seconds more we should be out of sight of the bark, in the dark, tumbling sea to leeward, with no more chance of rescue than if we were drowning in mid-Atlantic.  Suddenly a dark figure in the boat beside me,—­I learned afterward that it was Bowsher,—­tore off his coat and waistcoat and made a bold leap into the sea to windward.