We felt the little brig strain for an instant as if she would part in two, then she seemed to be swinging round with us, then to be quite still for a moment, trembling in every timber.

Last came a shock which hurled us from our seats, a deafening crash, and a flood of water pouring into the cabin.

We clambered, half drowned, to the deck.

The brig had, in the nautical phrase, "broached to," and she now lay on her beam-ends.
Before I could make out anything distinctly in the horrible confusion except the one tremendous certainty that we were entirely at the mercy of the sea, I heard a voice from the fore part of the ship which stilled the clamoring and shouting of the rest of the crew in an instant.

The words were in Italian, but I understood their fatal meaning only too easily.