As soon as they were beyond the rocks they bent to the oars. At the mate’s orders, the two apprentices and the sailors in the bow took their seats by the rowers and double-banked the oars.
“The skipper is getting every rag of sail off her,” the mate said, as he looked ahead. “There is another gun! It is getting darker and darker, I don’t suppose they can make us out. Give way, lads.”
The gloom deepened rapidly. The ship continued to fire guns every minute or two, and it was well she did so, for the mate had now lost sight of her.
“Which way do you think it will come, sir?” Stephen, who was at the stroke-oar, asked.
The mate shook his head. “There is no knowing,” he said. “If it is inshore, the Tiger will lay her bones by that wreck behind us. We can’t be above a mile away from her by the sound of that last gun. But it will be a close thing, I can hear the wind coming.”
Even those rowing were conscious of a low moaning sound.
“It comes from behind I think,” the mate said in answer to a look from Stephen. Suddenly a puff of wind from behind rippled the water round them and then died away again. “Row, lads,” the mate exclaimed, “I can see the ship now, she is not half a mile away; five minutes will do it.”
The men strained at the oars and the boat sprang forward at every stroke. They could hear the moaning sound growing louder and louder.
[pg 61]
“The captain has got her head off shore,” the mate said; “he has been towing her round. They have just hoisted the boat up. He has got the little storm-jib on her. Now, lads, another four or five hundred yards and we shall be alongside.”
It was a race with the storm, but the odds were too great. They were but a hundred yards from the ship when the roar rose into a wild scream, and a line of white water sprang towards them with fearful velocity.
“In oars, men!” the mate shouted. “Throw yourselves flat in the bottom of the boat—quick!”
The order was executed almost as soon as given. The mate, too, slipped off his seat on to the floor-board, while still retaining hold of the tiller. The next moment the storm struck them. It was well that the boat was still flying through the water with the way full on her; had she been lying motionless she would probably have sunk like a stone under the force of the blow. As it was she leapt forward like a horse under a spur. They passed but half a length or so from the ship. The latter had not yet gathered way, but lay pressed down until her bow was well-nigh level with the water. As the mate looked up he saw the captain holding on by the shrouds. Each waved a hand and then the boat flew on, and in a minute the ship was out of sight. The mate shouted in the ear of the sailor who rowed the stroke-oar and who was lying next to him:
“Crawl forward and try and fix the floor-board there, so as to show a few inches above the bow to act as a head-sail. If she broaches to, it is all up with us. As you go along tell each man to shift himself a bit more aft. Her stern must be well down or I can never keep her straight. If you can’t fix the floor-board, get up the mast; tie up the foresail in a roll, and then hoist it, that will give hold enough to the wind.”
The man nodded and made his way forward; he endeavoured to carry out the first part of his orders, but the moment he [pg 62]raised the floor-board above the level of the gunwale it was wrenched from his hands and blown ahead. With the aid of two other men he managed to step the mast. The mate waved his hand to him to say that that would do for the present. The man, however, prepared the sail ready for hoisting, rolling it up tightly and winding a cord round and round it; then he hooked the head on to the traveller on the mast, and lay down at its foot, holding the halliard in readiness to hoist it. The water was still perfectly smooth, and the boat flew straight before the wind without any tendency to broach to. Stephen, after the stroke-oar had gone forward, crept aft until he was beside the mate, and there lay for a time, feeling half-stupefied by the tremendous roar of the cyclone.
Captain Pinder was, as every good officer should be, most particular about his boats, and always had them built specially from his own design. They were broader than usual, and had a flat floor and a deep keel, thus they were extremely buoyant, their lines resembling those of the surf-boats on the west coasts of India and Africa, while their deep keels enabled them to sail close to the wind. The men chafed sometimes when, on their way to shore, they found themselves passed by the narrow boats of other ships; but the captain was perfectly indifferent to this, and used to say to other skippers who laughed at him for what they called his “walnut shells”:
“A boat is not made for racing; she is made to carry her crew in a heavy sea. My boats will live where yours would be swamped in five minutes, and with their great beam they will carry all sail, while you would not dare show a shred of canvas. It makes no difference to me whether I get to shore five minutes earlier or later; properly handled, the smallest of my boats ought to weather any ordinary gale, while the long-boat would be as safe to cross the Atlantic in as the Tiger herself, though I don’t say that she would be as comfortable.”
[pg 63]
The crew, every one of whom had many a time grumbled at the contrast between their beamy craft and the smart gigs of most other ships, now felt the advantage. The boat sped lightly along, raising her head higher and higher out of the water whenever a fresh blast of wind added to her speed, and, save for the sound of the rushing water against the sides, might have been at rest, for any motion that could be perceived. In half an hour the sea began to get up; as soon as it did so the mate made a signal to the man at the halliards, and the sail was drawn up. Tightly as it was rolled, the difference was at once perceptible, and the boat flew along faster than before. The men were now sitting up in the bottom of the boat; they knew that the battle with the storm had as yet scarcely begun, and that when the sea once got up they would have a terrible time of it. In an ordinary ship’s-boat the prospect would have been absolutely hopeless; but the Norwegian pilot-boats—whose model the captain had pretty closely followed—are able successfully to ride out the heaviest gale in the North Sea, and the mate and the two apprentices, the latter of whom had often heard from Captain Pinder, with whom the matter was a pet hobby, of the wonderful power of these craft in a gale, entertained a strong hope that she would live through whatever might come. As the sea rose, a small portion of the foresail was loosed, then more was freed, until the whole of the little sail was drawing, and the speed with which it dragged the boat along saved her from being swamped by the following waves. But in another hour the water no longer ran in waves, it was broken up in a confused and tumultuous sea; the greater part of the sail was again bound up, for there was no longer the same risk of being swamped, and it was necessary to moderate the boat’s speed in such a tumult of water.
“What makes it like this?” Stephen shouted.
“The circular motion of the wind,” the mate replied in a [pg 64]similar tone of voice. “I dare say we have made two or three circles already.”
“There is a compass in the locker behind you, sir.”
The mate nodded.
“That may be useful when the storm is over, but would not help us now, and might get broken.”
That Stephen could quite understand, for the motions of the boat were so sudden and unexpected that the crew often grasped at the thwarts and gunwale, fearing they would be thrown right out of her. At one moment a wave seemed to rise underneath her, and almost chuck her into the air, then she would sink between two masses of water, that looked as if they would tumble over and fill her, then she would dash head-forward at a wave that rose suddenly in front of her. For a time it seemed to all on board as if her destruction was imminent, but as the buoyant little craft struggled bravely on—shipping no more water than one man with the bailer could free her of as fast as it came aboard, in the shape of spray—they began to breathe again more freely.
It was now nine hours since the gale had burst upon them, and there were