But the leeward roll saved Patrician's deck from the worst of the breaking sea, though there was not a man upon it who was not instantly soaked to the skin. The ship toppled as the wave passed beyond her tipping-centre and she plunged downwards, into the welter of lesser waves that scarred the back of the great sea.

'Foretopmast's sprung above the lower cap, Mr Q… up helm! Get the ship before the wind and we'll take that tops'l off her!'

'Aye, aye, sir!' Quilhampton dashed the water from his face with his one good hand, and swung round, staggering as Patrician lurched; but the huge sea had been the culmination of many, an ocean-bred monster in whose trail, for a while at least, midgets would follow. 'Up helm, there!'

The ship's bow paid off to the southward and then to the east of south. Drinkwater anxiously stared aloft, trying to gauge the extent of the damage in the growing daylight and irritated at losing distance to windward. He had brought the frigate well south of Cape Horn, in a great tack to the south and west in order to double the tip of America as speedily as possible in an area where days of low scud made obtaining meridian altitudes difficult and only a fool would feel confident of his latitude.

'Stand by to take in the foretopsail!'

Quilhampton was bawling at his watch. Their response was slow, they seemed dazed, as if the great wave had some strange effect on them. But that was impossible, a figment of Drinkwater's fevered imagination. He held his peace for a moment longer.

'Man the clewlines and buntlines!'

The men were mustered about the pinrails and Drinkwater was reminded of something he had tried hard to forget; the dilatory action they had fought with a Danish privateer, caught off Duncansby Head, and which had escaped by superior sailing through the rocks off the Orkneys.