Ensign Merrill — page 76: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

S her with thunderous force squarely amidships. — reeled like a drunken man, and quivéfed from stem to _stern. A column of waiter thirty feet high spurted over rents : Ned, who happened to. be-in the pilot-house at the time examining a chart, was knocked prostrate and ‘rolled to leeward. But he soon regained his feet, and, rushing to the wheel, aided the helmsman in brie ‘the imperiled vessel before the wind once more. ‘This -maneuver was performed so quickly that only one wave boarded the Badger; a fortunate thing, as one more _the man at the wheel to keep her steady on his life, the middy ran out on the bridge to see what damage had _ been created. - To his consternation be saw that the narrow length of erating was empty. Where he had left Mark and the third officer standing on the starboard side was now ‘ _ vacancy—they had disappeared. ' A water-soaked object tightly jammed against one of : the stanchions caught his eye. He quickly picked it up. It was Mark’s uniform cap, a mute but eloquent messenger of disaster. Ris _ Dropping it with a groan, Ned Galled out his friend’s i “name at the top of his voice, but a mocking shriek from ‘the gale showed him the futility of it, and he stood horror- stricken and helpless for a moment. He was tempted to stop the engines and lower a boat, but one glance at the raging sea, furious with white crested waves and hills and valleys of tumbling water, re- ‘the bulwark railing up on the bridge, sweeping it with Pe cictless force, and ioe crashed on the deck in tor- ; “would have sent her to the bottom. lastily cautioning ‘% his ‘speech a lie toes of Ags hast aes ks acer ‘broadside on the sea, and a huge wave struck 4 - ~The power of the blow was terrific. The stanch ship. be “Gomicbooks.co