And “a pretty pickle” it was, with the “porps” floundering bodily from wave-crest to wave-crest, the winds shrieking through the cordage, and the storm-fiends brewing a hurricane like to engulf master and crew!

In the forehold were rebels who would sink us all to the bottom of the sea if they could.  Aft, powder enough to blow us all to eternity!  On deck, one brave man, two chittering lads, and a gin-soaked pilot steering a crazy course among the fanged reefs of Labrador.

The wind backed and veered and came again so that a weather-vane could not have shown which way it blew.  At one moment the ship was jumping from wave to wave before the wind with a single tiny storms’l out.  At another I had thought we must scud under bare poles for open sea.

The coast sheered vertical like a rampart wall, and up—­up—­up that dripping rock clutched the tossing billows like watery arms of sirens.  It needed no seaman to prophecy the fate of a boat caught between that rock and a nor’easter.

Then the gale would veer, and out raced a tidal billow of waters like to take the St. Pierre broadside.

“Helm hard alee!” shouts Radisson in the teeth of the gale.

For the fraction of a second we were driving before the oncoming rush.

Then the sea rose up in a wall on our rear.

There was a shattering crash.  The billows broke in sheets of whipping spray.  The decks swam with a river of waters.  One gun wrenched loose, teetered to the roll, and pitched into the seething deep.  Yard-arms came splintering to the deck.  There was a roaring of waters over us, under us, round us—­then M. de Radisson, Jean, and I went slithering forward like water-rats caught in a whirlpool.  My feet struck against windlass chains.  Jean saved himself from washing overboard by cannoning into me; but before the dripping bowsprit rose again to mount the swell, M. de Radisson was up, shaking off spray like a water-dog and muttering to himself:  “To be snuffed out like a candle—­no—­no—­no, my fine fellows!  Leap to meet it!  Leap to meet it!”

And he was at the wheel himself.

The ship gave a long shudder, staggered back, stern foremost, to the trough of the swell, and lay weltering cataracts from her decks.

There was a pause of sudden quiet, the quiet of forces gathering strength for fiercer assault; and in that pause I remembered something had flung over me in the wash of the breaking sea.  I looked to the crosstrees.  The mutineer was gone.

It was the first and last time that I have ever seen a smoking sea.  The ocean boiled white.  Far out in the wake of the tide that had caught us foam smoked on the track of the ploughing waters.  Waters—­did I say?  You could not see waters for the spray.

Then Jean bade me look how the stays’l had been torn to flutters, and we both set about righting decks.

For all I could see, M. Radisson was simply holding the wheel; but the holding of a wheel in stress is mighty fine seamanship.  To keep that old gallipot from shipping seas in the tempest of billows was a more ticklish task than rope-walking a whirlpool or sacking a city.