I called Captain Oudouse's attention to it, only to be informed that
he had watched it going down for several hours. There was little to
do, but that little he did very well, considering the circumstances.
He took off the light sails, shortened right down to storm canvas,
spread life lines, and waited for the wind. His mistake lay in what he
did after the wind came. He hove to on the port tack, which was the
right thing to do south of the Equator, if--and there was the rub--IF
one were NOT in the direct path of the hurricane.

We were in the direct path. I could see that by the steady increase of
the wind and the equally steady fall of the barometer. I wanted him to
turn and run with the wind on the port quarter until the barometer
ceased falling, and then to heave to. We argued till he was reduced to
hysteria, but budge he would not. The worst of it was that I could not
get the rest of the pearl buyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway, to
know more about the sea and its ways than a properly qualified
captain? was what was in their minds, I knew.

Of course, the sea rose with the wind frightfully; and I shall never
forget the first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped. She had fallen
off, as vessels do at times when hove to, and the first sea made a
clean breach. The life lines were only for the strong and well, and
little good were they even for them when the women and children, the
bananas and cocoanuts, the pigs and trade boxes, the sick and the
dying, were swept along in a solid, screeching, groaning mass.

The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne'S decks flush with the rails;
and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the
miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was a human