What happened then might have served as confirmation of mariners'
superstition that a veritable demon reigns in the heart of the tempest.
The attack on the old Polly showed devilish intelligence in team-work.
A crashing curler took advantage of the loosened deckload and smashed
the schooner a longside buffet which sent all the lumber in a sliding
drive against the lee rail and rigging. The mainsail had been only
partly secured; the spitter blew into the flapping canvas with all its
force and the sail snapped free and bellied out.
The next instant the Polly was tripped!
She went over with all the helpless, dead-weight violence of a man who
has caught his toe on a drooping clothes line in the dark.
The four men who were on deck were sailors and they did not need
orders when they felt that soul-sickening swing of her as she toppled.
Instinctively, with one accord, they dived for the cabin companionway.
Undoubtedly, as a sailor, the first thought of each was that the
schooner was going on to her beam-ends. Therefore, to remain on deck
meant that they would either slide into the water or that a smashing
wave would carry them off.
They went tumbling down together in the darkness, and all four of
them, with impulse of preservation as instant and true as that of the
trap-door spider, set their hands to the closing of the hatch and the
folding leaves of the door.
Captain Mayo, his clutch still on a knob, found himself pulled under
water without understanding at first just what had happened. He let go
his grip and came up to the surface, spouting. He heard the girl shriek
in extremity of terror, so near him that her breath swept his face. He
put out his arm and caught her while he was floundering for a footing.
When he found something on which to stand and had steadied himself, he
could not comprehend just what had happened; the floor he was standing
on had queer irregularities.
"We've gone over!" squalled Mr. Speed in the black darkness. "We've gone
clear over. We're upside down. We're standing on the ceiling!"
Then Mayo trod about a bit and convinced himself that the irregularities
under his feet were the beams and carlines.
The Polly had been tripped in good earnest! Mr. Speed was right--she
was squarely upside down!
Even in that moment of stress Mayo could figure out how it had happened.
The spitter must have ripped all her rotten canvas off her spars as she
rolled and there had been no brace to hold her on her beam-ends when she
went over.