Thurstane remained on deck, eating in soldierly fashion, his pockets full of cold beef and crackers, and his canteen (for every infantry officer learns to carry one) charged with hot coffee.  He was pretty wet, inasmuch as the spray showered incessantly athwart ships, while every few minutes heavy seas came over the quarter bulwarks, slamming upon the deck like the tail of a shark in his agonies.  During the morning several great combers had surmounted the port bow and rushed aft, carrying along everything loose or that could be loosened, and banging against the companion door with the force of a runaway horse.  And these deluges grew more frequent, for the gale was steadily increasing in violence, howling and shrieking out of the gilded eastern horizon as if Lucifer and his angels had been hurled anew from heaven.

About noon the close-reefed foretopsail burst open from earing to earing, and then ripped up to the yard, the corners stretching out before the wind and cracking like musket shots.  To set it again was impossible; the orders came, “Down yard—­haul out reef tackle;” then half a dozen men laid out on the spar and began furling.  Scarcely was this terrible job well under way when a whack of the slatting sail struck a Kanaka boy from his hold, and he was carried to leeward by the gale as if he had been a bag of old clothes, dropping forty feet from the side into the face of a monstrous billow.  He swam for a moment, but the next wave combed over him and he disappeared.  Then he was seen further astern, still swimming and with his face toward the brig; then another vast breaker rushed upon him with a lion-like roar, and he was gone.  Nothing could be done; no boat might live in such a sea; it would have been perilous to change course.  The captain glanced at the unfortunate, clenched his fists desperately, and turned to his rigging.  Another man took the vacant place on the yard, and the hard, dizzy, frightful labor there went on unflaggingly, with the usual cries of “Haul out, knot away,” etc.  It was one of the forms of a sailor’s funeral.

No time for comments or emotions; the gale filled every mind every minute.  It was soon found that the spanker, a pretty large sail, well aft and not balanced by any canvas at the bow, drew too heavily on the stern and made steering almost impossible.  A couple of Kanakas were ordered to reef it, but could do nothing with it; the skipper cursed them for “sojers” (our infantryman smiling at the epithet) and sent two first-class hands to replace them; but these also were completely beaten by the hurricane.  It was not till a whole watch was put at the job that the big, bellying sheet could be hauled in and made fast in the reef knots.  The brig now had not a rag out but her spencer and reduced spanker, both strong, small, and low sails, eased a good deal by their slant, shielded by the elevated port-rail, and thus likely to hold.  But it was not sailing; it was simply lying to.  The vessel rose and fell on the monstrous waves, but made scarcely more headway than would a tub, and drifted fast toward the still unseen California coast.