"Blow the man down, Johnny, blow the man down!
To my aye, aye, blow the man down!
If he be white man or black man or brown,
Give me some time to blow the man down."
Meanwhile, on the foc's'le head, Bucking Broncho trudged up and down, five paces to windward and five paces back in a vain attempt to keep himself warm.
"This here seems a pretty tough game I'm into," he mused. "It shore needs sand to make a winnin' against the kyards these tempestuous elements holds up, an' a gent can't drop out o' this game the fates drags him into. He's got to stay with it from his first sun-up to his last moon-rise, for if he lays down an' quits he leaves this mortal game for good, which no critter with the smallest grain o' sand is goin' to do without puttin' up some sort of a fight; yet when Providence begins to crowd the play an' get action this-a-way, it's shore a hard, deep crossin'.
"I never allows I'd have to dig up the hatchet an' go on the war-path with any sech ragin', blisterin' proposition as this. It kind o' shakes the grit out of a man an' makes him feel small an' petty."
As the Higgins rushed madly before the blast, she buried her nose to the cat-heads in each huge comber. At each plunge she threw great masses of spray full fifty feet away from her dripping cutwater to port and starboard.
The wind roared in a voice of thunder out of the foot of the foresail, but with the exception of the fore-topmast staysail the head sails had been made fast, and the long bare jibboom stabbed viciously into the smother as each overtaking sea rushed onward.
Broncho, as he looked ahead with straining eyes, submitted to a strong feeling of awe as each gigantic sea went foaming by, leaving a white curtain of spume and froth in its train as it roared past at headlong speed.
The majesty, the might, the stupendous power of the furious sea, its insolent treatment of the strong ship as it raged around her, its fury, its superb grandeur—all these appealed to the wild soul of the cowboy, and the charm, the fascination of the Great Waters was beginning to wrap itself around him.
It is this great power of fascination and attraction which the sea possesses that gets to the root of men's hearts, and, once there, can never be exorcised.