The rain swept past, and the wind fell suddenly, as it had come.  For a few minutes the sail hung and flapped, and then the worst happened.  I heard Bertric cry to us to hold on, and a fresh squall was on us.  It came out of the south as if hurled at us, taking the sail aback.  The forestay parted, and then with a crash and rending of broken timber the mast went some six feet from the deck, falling aft and to port, and taking with it half the length of the gunwale from amidships.

After that crash we stood and looked at one another, each fearing that there must be some hurt.  But there was none.  We had been well aft, and the falling masthead and yard had not reached us, though it had been too near to be pleasant.  Maybe the end of the yard, as it fell, missed me by a foot or so.

But though Gerda’s face was pale, and her eyes wide with the terror of the wreck, she never screamed or let go her hold of the sternpost to which she had been clinging.  She was a sea king’s daughter.

Chapter 8:  Storm And Salvage.

The ship took a heavy list, and some sea broke on board, but though it was rising fast, there was not yet enough to do much harm.  The floating bights of canvas hove us round broadside to the run of the waves, and needs must that we cleared away the wreck as soon as might be.

There were two axes slung at the foot of the mast in case of such chances as this, and with them we cut the mast adrift from the shattered gunwale, and got it overboard, so that the ship recovered herself somewhat.  The yard lay half on deck, and I climbed out on it, and cleared it from the mast without much trouble, cutting away all the rigging at the masthead, and letting the mast itself go to leeward as the waves would take it.

After that we had some hard work in getting the sail on board again, but it was done at last, and by that time the squall was over, while the wind had flown back to its old quarter—­the northeast—­and seemed likely to bide there.  Overhead the scud was flying with more wind than we could feel, and we had cause to be anxious.  The sea would get up, and unless we could set some sort of sail which would at least serve to keep her head to it, we should fare badly.  Moreover, it was likely enough that the ship was strained with the wrench of the falling mast.

There was no spare sail on board which we could use in the way of storm canvas, and the sails of the boat were too small to be of any use.  Nor was there a spar which we could use as mast, save the yard itself.  It must be that or nothing, and time pressed.

I suppose that we might have done better had we the chance, but what we did now in the haste which the rising sea forced on us, was to lash the forward end of the yard to the stump of the mast, without unbending the sail from it.  Then we set it up as best we might with the running rigging, and so had a mightily unhandy three-cornered sail of doubled canvas.  But when we cast off the lashings which had kept the sail furled while we worked, and sheeted it home, it brought the ship’s head to the wind, and for a time we rode easily enough.