The afternoon was still young, but the heavens were darker than
twilight, and the rocking sea was as black as slate, save where a
comber, as though gnashing its teeth in fury, flashed a sudden white
crest, which crumbled immediately into the heaving pall.
"Now, boys, together! Catch back that last spoke we lost!"
And while Dan's words were being shattered into shreds of sound by the
shriek of the gale, the three men bent their backs in a fresh effort to
put the _Fledgling's_ nose a point better into the on-rushing waves.
They did it too. With a hiss and a crunch the bow swung in square to
the watery thunderbolts and the stanch craft, survivor of a hundred
perils, a ten-foot section of her port rail gone, a great dent in the
steel deck-house forward, began to climb over the water hills with much
of her usual precision--down on her side, clear to the bottom of a
hollow, then settling on an even keel with a jerk, climbing the slaty
incline, stiff as a church, then down, down, half on her side again,
then up once more.
"She's making good weather of it," and Dan took his hands from the
wheel, stood erect, and gazed through the after windows, searching a
horizon which he could see only when the tug climbed to a wave top. He
turned to his mate.
"There's no use hunting for those barges," he said tentatively.
Pages:
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63