Part 23 (2/2)

”Thank 'ee, lad,” said Weeks. ”Just cut my boot away, and fix it up best you can.”

The tossing of the smack made the operation difficult and long. Weeks, however, never uttered a groan. Only Duncan once looked up, and said--”Halloa! You've hurt your face too. There's blood on your chin!”

”That's all right!” said Weeks, with an effort. ”I reckon I've just bit through my lip.”

Duncan stopped his work.

”You've got a medicine-chest, skipper, with some laudanum in it--?”

”Daren't!” replied Weeks. ”There's on'y you and me to work the s.h.i.+p.

Fix up the job quick as you can, and I'll have a drink of Friar's Balsam afterwards. Seems to me the gale's blowing itself out, and if on'y the wind holds in the same quarter--” And thereupon he fainted.

Duncan bandaged up the leg, got Weeks round, gave him a drink of Friar's Balsam, set the teapot within his reach, and went on deck. The wind was going down; the air was clearer of foam. He tallowed the lead and heaved it, and brought it down to Weeks. Weeks looked at the sand stuck on the tallow and tasted it, and seemed pleased.

”This gives me my longitude,” said he, ”but not my lat.i.tude, worse luck. Still, we'll manage it. You'd better get our dinner now; any odd thing in the way of biscuits or a bit of cold fish will do, and then I think we'll be able to run.”

After dinner Duncan said: ”I'll put her about now.”

”No; wear her and let her jibe,” said Weeks, ”then you'll on'y have to ease your sheets.”

Duncan stood at the wheel, while Weeks, with the compa.s.s swinging above his head, shouted directions through the companion. They sailed the boat all that night with the wind on her quarter, and at daybreak Duncan brought her to and heaved his lead again. There was rough sand with blackish specks upon the tallow, and Weeks, when he saw it, forgot his broken leg.

”My word,” he cried, ”we've hit the Fisher Bank! You'd best lash the wheel, get our breakfast, and take a spell of sleep on deck. Tie a string to your finger and pa.s.s it down to me, so that I can wake you up.”

Weeks waked him up at ten o'clock, and they ran southwest with a steady wind till six, when Weeks shouted--

”Take another cast with your lead.”

The sand upon the tallow was white like salt.

”Yes,” said Weeks; ”I thought we was hereabouts. We're on the edge of the Dogger, and we'll be in Yarmouth by the morning.” And all through the night the orders came thick and fast from the cabin. Weeks was on his own ground; he had no longer any need of the lead; he seemed no longer to need his eyes; he felt his way across the currents from the Dogger to the English coast; and at daybreak he shouted--

”Can you see land?”

”There's a mist.”

”Lie to, then, till the sun's up.”

Duncan lay the boat to for a couple of hours, till the mist was tinged with gold and the ball of the sun showed red on his starboard quarter.

The mist sank, the brown sails of a smack thrust upwards through it; coastwards it s.h.i.+fted and thinned and thickened, as though cunningly to excite expectation as to what it hid. Again Weeks called out--

”See anything?”

”Yes,” said Duncan, in a perplexed voice. ”I see something. Looks like a sort of mediaeval castle on a rock.”

A shout of laughter answered him.

”That's the Gorleston Hotel. The harbour-mouth's just beneath. We've hit it fine,” and while he spoke the mist swept clear, and the long, treeless esplanade of Yarmouth lay there a couple of miles from Duncan's eyes, glistening and gilded in the sun like a row of dolls'

houses.

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