crest caught her.  The first thing Lucy saw was Jack running from the helm with a loud cry of fear, followed by what looked an arch of fire, but sounded like a lion rushing, growling on its prey, and directly her feet and ankles were in a pool of water.  David bounded aft, swearing and splashing through it, and it turned into sparks of white fire flying this way and that.  He seized the helm, and discharged a loud volley of curses at Jack.

“Fling out ballast, ye d—­d cowardly, useless lubber,” cried he; and while Jack, who had recoiled into his normal state of nerves with almost ridiculous rapidity, was heaving out ballast, David discharged another rolling volley at him.

“Oh, pray don’t!” cried Lucy, trembling like an aspen leaf.  “Oh, think! we shall soon be in the presence of our Maker—­of Him whose name you—­”

“Not we,” cried David, with broad, cheerful incredulity; “we have lots more mischief to do—­that lubber and I. And if he thinks he is going there, let him end like a man, not like a skulking lubber, running from the helm, and letting the craft come up in the wind.”

“No, no, it was the sea he ran from.  Who would not?”

“The lubber!  If it had been a tiger or a bear I’d say nothing; but what is the use of trying to run from the sea?  Should have stuck to his post, and set that thundering back of his up—­it’s broad enough—­and kept the sea out of your boots.  The sea, indeed!  I have seen the sea come on board me, and clear the deck fore and aft, but it didn’t come in the shape of a cupful o’ water and a spoonful o’ foam.”  Here David’s wrath and contempt were interrupted by Jack singing waggishly at his work,

“Cease—­rude Boreas—­blustering—­railer!!”

At which sly hit David was pleased, and burst into a loud, boisterous laugh.

Lucy put her hands to her ears.  “Oh, don’t! don’t! this is worse than your blasphemies—­laughing on the brink of eternity; these are not men—­they are devils.”

“Do you hear that, Jack?  Come, you behave!” roared David.

A faint snarl from Talboys.  The water had penetrated him, and roused him from a state of sick torpor; he lay in a tidy little pool some eight inches deep.

The boat was bailed and lightened, but Lucy’s fears were not set at rest.  What was to hinder the recurrence of the same danger, and with more fatal effect?  She timidly asked David’s permission to let her keep the sea out.  Instead of snubbing her as she expected, David consented with a sort of paternal benevolence tinged with incredulity.  She then developed her plan; it was, that David, Jack, and she should sit in a triangle, and hold the tarpaulin out to windward and fence the ocean out.  Jack, being summoned aft to council, burst into a hoarse laugh; but David checked him.

“There is more in it than you see, Jack—­more than she sees, perhaps.  My only doubt is whether it is possible; but you can try.”