He ran the wheel hard-over and kept anxious track of the changing direction of the wind on his face and of the heave of the vessel.  This was the crucial moment.  In performing the evolution she would have to pass broadside to the surge before she could get before it.  The wind was blowing directly on his right cheek, when he felt the Sophie Sutherland lean over and begin to rise toward the sky—­up—­up—­an infinite distance!  Would she clear the crest of the gigantic wave?

Again by the feel of it, for he could see nothing, he knew that a wall of water was rearing and curving far above him along the whole weather side.  There was an instant’s calm as the liquid wall intervened and shut off the wind.  The schooner righted, and for that instant seemed at perfect rest.  Then she rolled to meet the descending rush.

Chris shouted to the captain to hold tight, and prepared himself for the shock.  But the man did not live who could face it.  An ocean of water smote Chris’s back and his clutch on the spokes was loosened as if it were a baby’s.  Stunned, powerless, like a straw on the face of a torrent, he was swept onward he knew not whither.  Missing the corner of the cabin, he was dashed forward along the poop runway a hundred feet or more, striking violently against the foot of the foremast.  A second wave, crushing inboard, hurled him back the way he had come, and left him half-drowned where the poop steps should have been.

Bruised and bleeding, dimly conscious, he felt for the rail and dragged himself to his feet.  Unless something could be done, he knew the last moment had come.  As he faced the poop, the wind drove into his mouth with suffocating force.  This brought him back to his senses with a start.  The wind was blowing from dead aft!  The schooner was out of the trough and before it!  But the send of the sea was bound to breach her to again.  Crawling up the runway, he managed to get to the wheel just in time to prevent this.  The binnacle light was still burning.  They were safe!

That is, he and the schooner were safe.  As to the welfare of his three companions he could not say.  Nor did he dare leave the wheel in order to find out, for it took every second of his undivided attention to keep the vessel to her course.  The least fraction of carelessness and the heave of the sea under the quarter was liable to thrust her into the trough.  So, a boy of one hundred and forty pounds, he clung to his herculean task of guiding the two hundred straining tons of fabric amid the chaos of the great storm forces.

Half an hour later, groaning and sobbing, the captain crawled to Chris’s feet.  All was lost, he whimpered.  He was smitten unto death.  The galley had gone by the board, the mainsail and running-gear, the cook, everything!

“Where’s the sailing-master?” Chris demanded when he had caught his breath after steadying a wild lurch of the schooner.  It was no child’s play to steer a vessel under single-reefed jib before a typhoon.