Mulford then regained all his powers.  He sprang to the fore-sheet, calling on the others for aid.  The violent surges produced by the wind prevented his grasping the sheet as soon as he could wish, and the vessel whirled round on her heel, like a steed that is frightened.  At that critical and dangerous instant, when the schooner was nearly without motion through the water, a squall struck the flattened sails, and bowed her down as the willow bends to the gale.  Mrs. Budd and Biddy screamed as usual, and Jack shouted until his voice seemed cracked, to “let go the head-sheets.”  Mulford did make one leap forward, to execute this necessary office, when the inclining plane of the deck told him it was too late.  The wind fairly howled for a minute, and over went the schooner, the remains of her cargo shifting as she capsized, in a way to bring her very nearly bottom upward.

1.  We suppress the names used by Mrs. Budd, out of delicacy to the individuals mentioned, who are still living.

CHAPTER VIII.

  Ay, fare you well, fair gentleman.

As You Like it.

While the tyro believes the vessel is about to capsize at every puff of wind, the practised seaman alone knows when danger truly besets him in this particular form.  Thus it was with Harry Mulford, when the Mexican schooner went over, as related in the close of the preceding chapter.  He felt no alarm until the danger actually came.  Then, indeed, no one there was so quickly, or so thoroughly apprized of what the result would be, and he directed all his exertions to meet the exigency.  While there was the smallest hope of success, he did not lessen, in the least, his endeavours to save the vessel; making almost superhuman efforts to cast off the fore-sheet, so as to relieve the schooner from the pressure of one of her sails.  But, no sooner did he hear the barrels in the hold surging to leeward, and feel by the inclination of the deck beneath his feet, that nothing could save the craft, than he abandoned the sheet, and sprang to the assistance of Rose.  It was time he did; for, having followed him into the vessel’s lee-waist, she was the first to be submerged in the sea, and would have been hopelessly drowned, but for Mulford’s timely succour.  Women might swim more readily than men, and do so swim, in those portions of the world where the laws of nature are not counteracted by human conventions.  Rose Budd, however, had received the vicious education which civilized society inflicts on her sex, and, as a matter of course, was totally helpless in an element in which it was the design of Divine Providence she should possess the common means of sustaining herself, like every other being endued with animal life.  Not so with Mulford:  he swam with ease and force, and had no difficulty in sustaining Rose until the schooner had settled into her new berth, or in hauling her on the vessel’s bottom immediately after.