A few lights quivered from the reeling yacht and
her mast-head lamps described glimmering arcs against the heavens.
Silent and grim, the tug took the brunt of all the seas had to
give--nose piercing the very heart of the waves, splitting them with
beautiful precision, rising, falling, reeling, pitching, but, through
all, hanging to the yacht with undying tenacity. So she fought, as she
had ever fought.
Contrary to the promise of the afternoon, the gale had not abated; the
seas, if anything, raced more fiercely, and the wind, which tore the
dark with a wailing moan, departed with a venomous shriek. Dan and his
mate stood hard at the wheel, Noonan, the deck-hand, was stationed
astern, and Crampton, the stanch old chief, and his fireman were down
in the heart of things, nursing the engines.
They were well nursed, too. The steady throb, the clank of the throws,
and the hum of the eccentrics rose to the pilot-house in cadence as
regular as the heart-throbs of a healthy ox. And the while Dan and his
mate gingerly manipulated the wheel so that the strain on the tow-line
was constant and even, with no slack or sudden jerks, which were truly
to be avoided in the face of the mad sea.
The sea grew indefinite in the dark,--as indefinite as the undulations
of a black shroud.
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