Part 64 (1/2)

Lucy gave a little scream. The sail, too, made a report like the crack of a pistol.

”Oh, what is that?” cried Lucy.

”Wind, mum,” replied the boatman, composedly.

”What is that purple line on the water, sir, out there, a long way beyond the other boat?

”Wind, mum.”

”It seems to move. It is coming this way.”

”Ay, mum, that is a thing that always makes to leeward,” said the old fellow, grinning. ”I'll take in a couple of reefs before it comes to us.”

Meantime, the moment the lugger lowered her mainsail, the schooner, divining, as it appeared, her intention, did the same, and luffed immediately, and was on the new tack first of the two.

”Ay, my la.s.s,” said the old boatman, ”you are smartly handled, no doubt, but your square stern and your try-hanglar sail they will take you to leeward of us pretty soon, do what you can.”

The event seemed to justify this a.s.sertion; the little lugger was on her best point of sailing, and in about ten minutes the distance between the two boats was slightly but sensibly diminished. The lateen, no doubt, observed this, for she began to play the game of short tacks, and hoisted her mainsail, and carried on till she seemed to sail on her beam-ends, to make up, as far as possible, by speed and smartness for what she lost by rig in beating to windward.

”They go about quicker than we do,” said Talboys.

”Of course they do; they have not got to dip their sail, as we have, every time we tack.”

This was the true solution, but Mr. Talboys did not accept it.

”We are not so smart as we ought to be. Now you go to the helm, and I and the boy will dip the lug.”

The old boatman took the helm as requested, and gave the word of command to Mr. Talboys. ”Stand _by_ the foretack.”

”Yes,” said Mr. Talboys, ”here I am.”

”Let _go_ the fore-tack”; and, contemporaneously with the order, he brought the boat's head round.

Now this operation is always a nice one, particularly in these small luggers, where the lug has to be dipped, that is to say, lowered, and raised again on the opposite side of the mast; for the lug should not be lowered a moment too soon, or the boat, losing her way, would not come round; nor a moment too late, lest the sail, owing to the new position the boat is taking under the influence of the rudder, should receive the wind while between the wind and the mast, and so the craft be taken aback, than which nothing can well happen more disastrous.

Mr. Talboys, though not the accomplished sailor he thought himself, knew this as well as anybody, and with the boy's help he lowered the sail at the right moment; but, getting his head awkwardly in the way, the yard, in coming down, hit him on the nose and nearly knocked him on to his beam-ends. It would have been better if it had done so quite instead of bounding off his nose on to his shoulder and there resting; for, as it was, the descent of the sail being thus arrested half-way at the critical moment, and the boat's head coming round all the same, a gust of wind caught the sail and wrapped it tight round the mast to windward. The boy uttered a cry of terror so significant that Lucy trembled all over, and by an uncontrollable impulse leaned despairingly back and waved her white handkerchief toward the antagonist boat. The old boatman with an oath darted forward with an agility he could not have shown ash.o.r.e.

The effect on the craft was alarming. If the whole sail had been thus taken aback, she would have gone down like lead; for, as it was, she was driven on her side and at the same time driven back by the stern; the whole sea seemed to rise an inch above her gunwale; the water poured into her at every drive the gusts of wind gave her, and the only wonder seemed why the waves did not run clean over her.

In vain the old boatman, cursing and swearing, tugged at the canvas to free it from the mast. It was wrapped round it like Dejanira's s.h.i.+rt, and with as fatal an effect; the boat was filling; and as this brought her lower in the water, and robbed her of much of her buoyancy, and as the fatal cause continued immovable, her destruction was certain.

Every cheek was blanched with fear but Lucy's, and hers was red as fire ever since she waved her handkerchief; so powerful is modesty with her s.e.x. A true virgin can blush in death's very grasp.

In the midst of this agitation and terror, suddenly the boat was hailed. They all looked up, and there was the lateen coming tearing down on them under all her canvas, both her broad sails spread out to the full, one on each side. She seemed all monstrous wing. The lugger being now nearly head to wind, she came flying down on her weather bow as if to run past her, then, lowering her foresail, made a broad sweep, and brought up suddenly between the lugger and the wind. As her foresail fell, a sailor bounded over it on to the forecastle, and stood there with one foot on the gunwale, active as Mercury, eye glowing, and a rope in his hand.

”Stand by to lower your mast,” roared this sailor in a voice of thunder to the boatman of the lugger; and the moment the schooner came up into the wind athwart the lugger's bows he bounded over ten feet of water into her, and with a turn of the hand made the rope fast to her thwart, then hauling upon it, brought her alongside with her head literally under the schooner's wing.

He and the old boatman then instantly unstepped the mast and laid it down in the boat, sail and all. It was not his great strength that enabled them to do this (a dozen of him could not have done it while the wind pressed on the mast); it was his address in taking all the wind out of the lug by means of the schooner's mainsail. The old man never said a word till the work was done; then he remarked, ”That was clever of you.”

The new-comer took no notice whatever. ”Reef that sail, Jack,” he cried; ”it will be in the lady's face by and by; and heave your bailer in here; their boat is full of water.”