The night worsened as it went on; the wind piled up steadily in violence; and the sea rose till the sodden vessel rode it with a very babel of shrieks, and groans, and complaining sounds.  Toward morning, a terrific squall powdered up against them and hove her down, and a dull rumbling was heard in her bowels to let them know that once more her cargo had shifted.

For the moment, even Kettle thought that this time she was gone for good.  She lost her way, and lay down like a log in the water, and the racing seas roared over her as though she had been a half-tide rock.  By a miracle no one was washed overboard.  But her people hung here and there to eyebolts and ropes, mere nerveless wisps of humanity, incapable under those teeming cataracts of waves to lift so much as a finger to help themselves.

Then to the impact of a heavier gasp of the squall, the topgallant masts went, and the small loss of of top-weight seemed momentarily to ease her.  Kettle seized upon the moment.  He left the trimmer and one of the Portuguese at the wheel, and handed himself along the streaming decks and kicked and cuffed the rest of his crew into activity.  He gave his orders, and the ship wore slowly round before the wind, and began to pay away on the other tack.

Great hills of sea deluged her in the process, and her people worked like mermen, half of their time submerged.  But by degrees, as the vast rollers hit and shook her with their ponderous impact, she came upright again, and after a little while shook the grain level in her holds, and assumed her normal, angle of heel.

Dayton-Philipps struggled up and, hit Kettle on the shoulder.  “How’s that, umpire?” he bawled.  “My faith, you are a clever, sailor.”

Captain Kettle touched his hat.  “God bore a hand there, sir,” he shouted through the wind.  “If I’d tried to straighten her up like that without outside help, every man here would have been fish-chop this minute.”

Even Dayton-Philipps, sceptical though he might be, began to think there was “something in it” as the voyage went on.  To begin with, the leak stopped.  They did not know how it had happened, and they did not very much care.  Kettle had his theories.  Anyway it stopped.  To go on with, although they were buffeted with every kind of evil weather, all their mischances were speedily rectified.  In a heavy sea, all their unstable cargo surged about as though it had been liquid, but it always shifted back again before she quite capsized.  The mizzen-mast went bodily overboard in one black rain-squall because they were too short-handed to get sail off it in time, but they found that the vessel sailed almost as well as a brig, and was much easier for a weak crew to manage.

All hands got covered with salt-water boils.  All hands, with the exception of Kettle—­who remained, as usual, neat—­grew gaunt, bearded, dirty, and unkempt.  They were grimed with sea-salt, they were flayed with violent suns; but by dint of hard schooling they were becoming handy sailormen, all of them, and even the negro stonemason learned to obey an order without first thinking over its justice till he earned a premonitory hiding.