HOMEWARD BOUND. 135

The enormous squares of canvas flapped and shivered
with reports like the crackle of musketry, and then, with
one thunderous reverberation, they filled again, and the
brig gathered headway each instant until she was leaping
over the foam-crested waves like a thing of life.

Bounding madly onward into the gloom which could
not be pierced by the vision, the little ship, now tossed
high on the summits of the foam-crested waves, and again
plunged into the yawning chasms of water, dashed on,
her crew powerless to do anything save keep her dead
before the angry blast which might not lose its fury until
she was amid the cluster of islands to the southward of
Formosa.

The two hours which followed were for Ben full of
anxiety and forebodings of evil.

Was this, his first command, to be ended so shortly by
the tempest’s blast ?

Then the dense mass of clouds thinned away until the
light of the sun could be faintly seen.

The shrieking wind subsided almost as suddenly as it
had come, leaving in its stead the gentlest of summer
breezes, and nothing remained of the tempest save the
driven, leaping water which had literally been lashed into
foam.

“Tt was short and sweet,’’ Ben said, with a sigh of relief
as he gave the order to put the ship on her course once
more, “and it ’ll take a good twenty-four hours to regain
the ground we have lost by this smother.”

“It’s a pity sailors could n’t have the privilege of order-