For two days the favoring breeze that was helping the crippled Sea Gypsy along held. Then there fell a flat calm, and the glass began to drop ominously. Captain Sparhawk went about with a grave face. Jack gathered from a few remarks the reserved seaman had let fall, that he expected another hurricane. Situated as she was, the Sea Gypsy’s predicament would be a serious one if such a tornado as the one she had safely weathered were to strike her now. The sailors stood about in little knots discussing the situation and casting anxious glances at the horizon. Mr. Jukes and the captain and officers spent long hours on the bridge in careful consultation.
Before the sun set, the question as to whether or no the Sea Gypsy was in for a second fight with the elements was definitely settled. Thunder and lightning deafened and blinded the voyagers. Rain descended as only tropical rain can, flooding the decks and blinding the look-outs and the officers on the bridge. The Sea Gypsy’s canvas was reduced, only enough being kept on to keep her from literally rolling her hull under the towering water mountains.
The crew clawed their way about the decks by holding fast to life-lines which Captain Sparhawk had ordered stretched when the storm broke. Raynor, coming on deck to report that all was well below, met Jack on his way back to the lower regions of the ship.
“Well, old fellow, this is a corker and no mistake,” he observed, raising his voice in order to make it audible above the frantic battle noises of the storm.
“It’s the worst yet,” Jack agreed.
“And it will be worse than ever before it gets better, according to the way Captain Sparhawk put it when I reported to him,” said the young engineer.
“Hullo, what’s that?” exclaimed Jack suddenly.
“We hit something,” shouted Raynor. “Look at the watch running forward.”
“Storm or no storm, I’m going forward to see what’s up,” ejaculated Jack, and, followed by Raynor, he hurried toward the bow where several of the oil-skin coated crew were already clustered.
CHAPTER VIII. – “LAND, HO!”
It was a fight every inch of the way, but at last they reached the bow and found the sailors bending over the recumbent form of a youth.
“What has happened? What did we strike?” asked Jack of one of the sailors.
“Struck a small boat,” was the reply. “How it ever lived in this sea is a wonder. This fellow was in it.”
“Is he all right?”
“No; about half dead,” rejoined the third mate. “Carry him aft, men, and put him in one of the spare cabins. With care he may pull through. I’m going to notify the captain,” and he hurried off.
Several men picked up the form of the rescued one. Jack suddenly saw his face, pale as death, with his wet hair hanging over his forehead.
“Great guns, Billy!” he gasped.
“What is it? What’s the matter? Do you know him?” queried Raynor.
“Know him? I should say so. So do you. It’s Harvey Thurman.”
“Impossible.”
“Not at all. Take a look at him yourself.”
“By George, you are right. What a strange happening,” declared Raynor, after taking one glance at the youth the crew were bearing off.
“What in the world can he be doing in this part of the ocean in a small boat?” wondered Jack.
“I’ve no idea. We’ll have to wait till he comes to, if he ever does. I remember hearing now that he had got a job on a Pacific steamer. Perhaps it had been wrecked and he was a castaway.”
“Possibly,” agreed Jack. “I’m glad we saved him, although he has made a lot of trouble for us in the past.”
As readers of “The Ocean Wireless Boys and the Naval Code” will recall, it was Harvey Thurman who was assistant wireless man on the Columbia and whose dislike of Jack and Billy resulted in his joining their enemies in an effort to discredit them. After the stolen code was recovered, Thurman was not, like the rest engaged in the rascally business, sent to prison, but was allowed to go free at the boys’ behest, as they believed he had been badly influenced more than anything else.
“So you know him?” said Captain Sparhawk, as they all stood in the cabin to which Thurman had been taken and restoratives were administered to the unfortunate youth.
“Indeed we do,” said both boys, and they told the captain something of their experiences.
“He is not a desirable character then?” said the captain.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Jack. “We thought he was influenced by bad companions. But at any rate he had no liking for us. Is he going to get better?”
“I think so. See, he is opening his eyes.”
Thurman’s face, under the influence of the restoratives, had become suffused by a faint flush of color. He looked wildly about him. As his gaze rested first on Jack and then on Raynor he looked like a sleeper newly awakened from a night-mare.
“Gracious, am I dreaming?” he gasped.
“No, my lad,” said the captain, “but you had a close call from going into a sleep from which you never would have awakened.”
“But Ready and Raynor! What are they doing here?”
“Oh, we’re solid enough. Nothing ghostly about us,” Jack assured him, extending his hand. “Congratulations on your narrow escape from death, and – and we’ll let bygones be bygones.”
“I never meant to be really bad,” said Thurman weakly.
“Say no more about it,” advised Billy. “But tell us how you came to be adrift in such a fearful storm in that dinky little boat.”
“Better let him eat some soup first,” said the captain, taking a steaming bowl from the steward, from whom he had ordered it for the relief of the castaway, “he’s half starved.”
The way in which Thurman gulped down the grateful food showed that this statement was no exaggeration.
“That’s the first food I’ve had in two days,” he declared. “You see, when the Galilee, that was the schooner I was on board of, sank in the storm some days ago, I escaped in the boat. We launched two altogether, but I guess the other one was lost.”
“Begin at the beginning,” suggested Jack.
“All right then. It was this way, Ready: After my – er – my little trouble with you I came west. I got a job as assistant wireless man at a lonely station on one of the Caroline Islands. But I couldn’t stand the life and resigned. No regular steamers touch there, so I got passage on the Galilee, a little trading schooner for Papeiti. She sprang a leak and sank, and there was only a loaf of bread and a few cans of meat in the boat when I shoved off from the sinking hulk. It was all I had time to put in. What happened after that till you bumped into me and saved me is like a bad dream. I guess I was crazy most of the time. I never expected to be saved, and – and I guess it has been a good lesson to me.”
“If it has made you resolve to reform, it will not have been wasted,” said Jack. And he then told Thurman something about themselves. Captain Sparhawk promised that as soon as Thurman was stronger he would find a job for him, for the boys’ old enemy was penniless, having left his wallet behind him in his haste at fleeing from the sinking schooner.
All that night the tempest raged with unabated fury. At times it seemed as if the yacht must go to pieces, so sadly was she wrenched and buffeted by the giant combers. There was little sleep for any on board that night and the day broke wildly on a worried, harried-looking crew. Shortly before noon the foresail tore away from the bolt ropes, and split with a noise like the explosion