Then they tried to set some kind of sail by aid of a boathook, but while they were doing this, the boat, which had drifted side on to the great waves raised by the gale upon the face of the broad river, overturned.  I saw some of the men clinging to the boat and one or two scrambling on to her keel, but what chanced to them and the others I do not know, who had rushed to the steering gear to set the ship upon her course again, lest her fate should be that of the boat, or we should go ashore and be captured by those who galloped on the bank, or be drowned.  This was the last I ever saw or heard of the crew of the Blanche.

The ship’s bow came round and, driven by the ever-increasing gale, she rushed on her course towards the sea, bearing us with her, two weak and lonely men.

“Kari,” I said, “what shall we do?  Try to run ashore, or sail on?”

He thought awhile then answered, pointing to those who galloped, now but tiny figures on the distant bank: 

“Master, yonder is death, sure death; and yonder,” here he pointed to the sea, “is death—­perhaps.  Master, you have a God, and I, Kari, have another God, mayhap same God with different name.  I say—­Trust our Gods and sail on, for Gods better than men.  If we die in water, what matter?  Water softer than rope, but I think not die.”

I nodded, for the reasoning seemed good.  Rather would I be drowned than fall into the hands of those who were galloping on the shore, to be dragged back to London and a felon’s doom.

So I pressed upon the tiller to bring the Blanche more into mid-channel, and headed for the sea.  Wider and wider grew the estuary and farther and farther away the shores as the Blanche scudded on beneath her small sails with the weight of the gale behind her, till at last there was the open sea.

Within a few feet of the tiller was a deck-house, in which the crew ate, built of solid oak and clamped with iron.  Here was food in plenty, ale, too, and with these we filled ourselves.  Also, leaving Kari to hold the tiller, I took off my armour and in place of it clothed myself in the rough sea garments that lay about with tall greased boots, and then sent him to do likewise.

Soon we lost sight of land and were climbing the great ocean billows, whose foamy crests rolled and spurted wherever the eye fell.  We could set no course but must go where the gale drove us, away, away we knew not whither.  As I have said, the Blanche was new and strong and the best ship that ever I had sailed in upon a heavy sea.  Moreover, her hatches were closed down, for this the sailors had done after we weighed, so she rode the waters like a duck, taking no harm.  Oh! well it was for me that from my childhood I had had to do with ships and the sailing of them, and flying from the following waves thus was able to steer and keep the Blanche’s poop right in the wind, which seemed to blow first from one quarter and then from that.