The spray dashed in their faces, and Bernt and his next youngest brother Anton, who till now had helped his mother with the halliard, were at last obliged to hold the yard, an expedient resorted to when the boat cannot even bear to go with the last reef--in this case the fifth.
The companion boat, which had in the meantime vanished, now suddenly appeared again beside them with exactly the same amount of sail as Elias's boat; and he began rather to dislike the look of the crew on board of her.

The two men who stood there holding the yard, whose pale faces he could distinguish under the sou'westers, seemed to him, in the curious light from the breaking foam, more like corpses than living beings, and apparently they did not speak a word.
A little to windward he saw once more the high white crest of another huge wave coming through the dark, and he prepared for it in time.

The boat was laid with her stem in a slanting direction to it, and with as much sail as she could carry, in order to give her sufficient speed to cleave it and sail right through it.

In it rushed with the roar of a waterfall; again the boat half heeled over, and when the wave was past his wife no longer sat at the halliard, and Anton no longer stood holding the yard--they had both gone overboard.
This time, too, Elias thought he heard the same horrible cries in the air; but in the midst of them he distinctly heard his wife calling his name in terror.

When he comprehended that she was washed overboard, he only said: "In Jesus' name!" and then was silent.