Up to their knees in water; cold as ice, blinded with spray, deafened with roaring billows, they tossed and tumbled in a fiery foaming hell of waters, and still, though despairing, clung to their lives, and bailed with their hats unceasingly.
Day broke, and the first sight it revealed to them was a brig to windward staggering along, and pitching under close-reefed topsails.
They started up, and waved their hats, and cried aloud.

But the wind carried their voices to leeward, and the brig staggered on.
They ran up their little signal of distress; but still the ship staggered on.
Then the miserable men shook hands all round, and gave themselves up for lost.
But, at this moment, the brig hoisted a vivid flag all stripes and stars, and altered her course a point or two.
She crossed the boat's track a mile ahead, and her people looked over the bulwarks, and waved their hats to encourage those tossed and desperate men.
Having thus given them the weather-gage, the brig hove to for them.
They ran down to her and crept under her lee; down came ropes to them, held by friendly hands, and friendly faces shone down at them.

Eager grasps seized each as he went up the ship's side, and so, in a very short time, they sent the woman up, and the rest being all sailors and clever as cats, they were safe on board the whaling brig _Maria,_ Captain Slocum, of Nantucket, U.S.
Their log, compass and instruments were also saved.
The boat was cast adrift, and was soon after seen bottom upward on the crest of a wave.
The good Samaritan in command of the _Maria_ supplied them with dry clothes out of the ship's stores, good food, and medical attendance, which was much needed, their legs and feet being in a deplorable condition, and their own surgeon crippled.

A southeasterly gale induced the American skipper to give Cape Horn a wide berth, and the _Maria_ soon found herself three degrees south of that perilous coast.

There she encountered field-ice.