Our only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the seas.
It was hard work to do this, she plunged so, and so beat and belabored the billows with her rising and falling bows.

Now and then one of Higbie's oars would trip on the top of a wave, and the other one would snatch the boat half around in spite of my cumbersome steering apparatus.
We were drenched by the sprays constantly, and the boat occasionally shipped water.

By and by, powerful as my comrade was, his great exertions began to tell on him, and he was anxious that I should change places with him till he could rest a little.

But I told him this was impossible; for if the steering oar were dropped a moment while we changed, the boat would slue around into the trough of the sea, capsize, and in less than five minutes we would have a hundred gallons of soap-suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we could not even be present at our own inquest.
But things cannot last always.

Just as the darkness shut down we came booming into port, head on.