Then he shut his teeth
tight and talked slowly through them.
"Where the yacht hit us?" he asked.
"Yes, forward; it's opened up a little under the floor plates--about
twenty strokes a minute I should say; the force-pump's kept it level so
far."
"Good," said Dan; "there's nothing else to do but keep it going."
"Nothing," said the chief, and he reeled out of the pitching
pilot-house.
Two, three, four hours more--the water had gained nine inches, so the
chief reported through the speaking-tube. But still the _Fledgling_
held her tow, and Dan and Mulhatton stood silent at the wheel, the rush
of the wind, which had long torn out the double windows, swirling their
hair into their eyes and numbing their torn and bleeding hands. The
elements, as though divining the weakening of the tug,--a tug which
often had laughed them to scorn,--were making mad work of it; there
were strange sounds, unforeseen blows--but still the tug hung on.
There came an hour in which she did not rise to the waves as she had
been doing,--an hour when the leak gained terribly, and when the
_Fledgling_, struggling bravely, if wearily, upward to meet a wave,
would stop half-way with a jerk and a sigh, the wave gouging along the
deck--breaking over the stern-board.
They could feel her going in the pilot-house.
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