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Updated: June 28, 2025
The whitecaps were leaping on the crest of the surges driving in through the straits and the surf bursting high on the jagged rocks at the base of the cliffs. A little coast steamer from Santa Barbara way came pitching and plunging in from sea, and one or two venturesome craft, heeling far to leeward, tore through the billows and tossed far astern a frothing wake.
The boat had just got from under the shelter of the reef, when the wind again shifted several points to the westward, and blew with greater violence than before. The crew tugged bravely at their oars; but all their efforts could scarcely send the boat ahead in the teeth of the gale. The ship, heeling over, made her way across the sound.
Some of them were either in the ward-room or gun-room, and others were walking the quarter-deck with the help of their gentlemen friends, as it was no easy matter, the ship heeling over as much as she was then doing. They thought it very good fun, however, and were laughing and talking as they tried to keep their feet from slipping.
For a moment it looked as if it could not possibly clear the opposite cliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel that rotated beyond. And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward, upward into the wind-swept sky. The suspense of the moment gave place to a fury of exasperation as the swarming people realised that Ostrog had escaped them.
A loud and piercing cry from the ship's company was followed by an enormous sea striking the frigate on the counter, at once heeling her over and forcing her ahead, so that she slipped off from the rock again into deep water. "She's off again, sir," said the master. "It's God's mercy, Mr Pearce! Bring her to the wind as soon as you can," replied the captain, with composure.
She allowed it to surprise her, not choosing to revert to an uneasy sensation of the morning. That some one, her process of reasoning informed her, was necessarily an English young lady. She reserved her questions till they should cease this hopping and heeling down the zigzag of the slippery path-track.
Indeed, the wild upward sweep of the schooner, heeling almost to her beam ends as she was flung aloft upon the breast of the onrushing wave, was an experience terrifying enough to turn a man's hair grey.
I saw Miss Denning looking wonderingly at her brother as we went out, and again fought our way back to the forecastle-hatch, no easy task with the ship heeling over, and the spray flying as it did; but I felt hardened to it now, and the darkness did not appear so terrible, nor the danger so great, with the warm glow I felt spreading through me.
I am sure we ought to have done it; for, besides these armies of human furies, we had a very leaky ship, and all our pumps could hardly keep the water from growing upon us, and our carpenters were overboard, working to find out and stop the wounds we had received, heeling her first on the one side, and then on the other; and it was very diverting to see how, when our men heeled the ship over to the side next the wild army that stood on the east horn of the sand, they were so amazed, between fright and joy, that it put them into a kind of confusion, calling to one another, hallooing and skreeking, in a manner that it is impossible to describe.
In heaving down the pink, Low had ordered so many men to the shrouds and yards, that the ports, by her heeling, got under water, and the sea rushing in, she overset: he and the doctor were then in the cabin, and as soon as he observed the water gushing in, he leaped out of the stern port, while the doctor attempted to follow him.
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