WAGING A DESPERATE BATTLE
"We're lost!" exclaimed Miss Elting, turning back into the cabin. But she was suddenly attracted by a shout from without.
"Cut away!" screamed Harriet. "Jane, are you there? Tommy!"
"He's gone!" It was Jane's voice that answered in a long, wailing cry.
The water was rapidly receding from the cabin. Miss Elting quickly straightened the girls out. She did not know how seriously they had been hurt, if at all, but after making sure that all within the cabin were alive, the guardian groped her way to the cockpit. Harriet stood braced against the wheel, shouting out her commands, screaming at the top of her voice to make herself heard and understood above the gale.
The guardian staggered over to her.
"Oh, what has happened?" she cried.
"The mast has gone overboard—part of it at least, and—"
"Captain Billy's gone, too! The boom struck and carried him over!" yelled Jane when she had crept near enough to be heard.
"Cut away, I tell you. Here is a hatchet." Harriet had groped in the locker, from which she drew a keen-edged hatchet and handed it to Crazy Jane McCarthy. "You'll have to be quick. We're being swamped. See, we are taking water over the side. Oh, do hurry, Jane!"
"The captain gone!" moaned Miss Elting. "Can nothing be done?"
"No." Harriet's voice was firm. "Unless we work fast we shall all go to the bottom. We must save those on the boat, Miss Elting. But you listen for his voice. Oh, this is terrible!"
The steady whack—whack of the hatchet in the hands of Jane McCarthy came faintly to their ears. Once Jane slipped over the side into the water; but, grasping the life-line to which she was tied, the girl pulled herself back on the deck and set pluckily to work again. It was the wonder of Harriet Burrell that the "Sue" kept afloat at all, for she was more under water than above it, and the seas were breaking over her.
"Please get back and look after the girls. Where is your life-line?" asked Harriet of Miss Elting.
"I threw it off when I went into the cabin."
"Get back! Stay there until I call you, or—"
Harriet did not finish the sentence, but the guardian understood and turned back into the cabin, where she did her best to comfort the panic-stricken Camp Girls.
"Whoop!" shrieked Jane.
The "Sue" righted with a violent jolt. Jane had freed the side of the boat of the rigging which, attached to the broken mast and sail, was holding the craft down and threatening every second to swamp her. Jane crept down into the cockpit, and was about to cut away the stays that held the wreckage, which was now floating astern of the sloop.
"Stop!" commanded Harriet. "Wait till we see what effect it has on us, but stand by to cut away if we see there is peril. Oh, I hope we shall be able to ride it out. That poor captain! He must have been stunned by a blow of the boom. It seems cruel to stand here without lifting a hand to save him. But what can we do? Jane, is there anything you can think of that we can do?"
Crazy Jane shook her head slowly.
"Nothing but to tell his family, if we ever get back to land," was her solemn reply. "But, darlin', we aren't on land ourselves yet, and I doubt me very much if we ever shall be. See the waves breaking over this old tub. How long do you think she will stand it?"
Harriet did not answer at once. She was peering forward into the darkness. Holding up her hand, she noted the direction of the wind.
"Do you see, Jane, the 'Sue' is behaving better! She isn't taking nearly so much water. Do you know what has happened?"
"What is it, darlin'?"
"The wreckage that you cut away is holding the stern and acting as a sea anchor, and it has pulled the bow of the boat around until we are headed right into the gale. I am glad I didn't let you cut loose the wreckage. It may be the very thing that will save us, but I don't know. I wish you would get some one to help you bail out the pit. The water is getting deep in here again, and the cabin is all afloat."
"But more will come in," objected Jane.
"And more will swamp us, first thing we know. You take the wheel. I will bail."
"I'll do it myself, darlin'."
Jane asked Hazel to assist her, and together they slaved until it seemed as if their backs surely would break.
The storm, while not abating any, did not appear to increase in fury. It was severe enough as it was. The seas loomed above the broken craft like huge, black mountains, yet somehow they seemed to break just a few seconds before engulfing her and to divide, passing on either side, but the "Sister Sue" wallowed in a smother of foam, creaking and groaning, giving in every joint, and threatening to fall to pieces with each new twist and turn forced upon her by the writhing seas.
Miss Elting, after having in a measure quieted the girls in the cabin, came out clinging to a rope. She and Harriet held a shouted conversation, after which the guardian returned to the cabin, where there was less danger of being beaten down by huge seas, although one could get fully as wet inside the cabin as on deck.
The hours of the night wore slowly away. The intense impenetrable blackness, the roar and thunder of the sea, the terrible jerking, jolting and hurling beneath them, shook the nerves of the girls, keeping them constantly in a half-dazed condition that perhaps lessened the keenness of their suffering. Harriet and Jane, however, never for a single second relaxed their vigilance, or left a single thing undone that would tend to ease the boat or to contribute to its safety. The binnacle light long since had been extinguished by the water, making it impossible to see the compass to tell which way they were headed. Little good it would have done them to know, either, they being powerless to change their course, or to make any headway at all, save as they drifted with the seas. Harriet hoped they might be drifting toward shore. Instead, they were being slowly carried down the coast and parallel with it.
At last the gray of the early dawn appeared in the east, but it was a "high dawn," with the light first appearing high in the sky, meaning to sailors wind or storm. Harriet did not know the meaning of it, however, though she thought it a most peculiar looking sky. And now, as the light came slowly, they were able to get an idea what the sea in which they had been wallowing all night looked like. It was a fearsome sight. As they gazed their hearts sank within them. Mountains of leaden water rose into the air, then sank out of sight again, and when the "Sue" went into one of those troughs of the sea it was like sinking into a great black pit from which there was no escape. Yet the buoyant hull of the sloop rose every time, shaking the water from her glistening white sides and bending to the oncoming seas preparatory to taking another dizzy dive.
The lower half of the mast was still standing, a ragged stump, the deck itself swept clean of every vestige of wreckage and movable equipment. What troubled Harriet most was the loss of the water cask. The small water tank in the cabin had been hurled to the floor by the pitching of the sloop and its contents spilled. The Meadow-Brook Girl saw that they were going to be without water to drink, a most serious thing, provided they were not drowned before needing something to drink. As she studied the boat, an idea was gradually formed in her mind, a plan outlined that she determined to try to adopt were the wind to go down sufficiently to make the attempt prudent. Harriet called the others to her, and the girls talked it over in all its details for the better part of an hour.
There was nothing to eat on board now, nor did many of the party feel like eating. Tommy, however, found her appetite shortly after daybreak and raised quite a disturbance because there was nothing to be had. She suggested breaking open the doors that led to the chain locker, but of this Harriet would not hear. She did not wish water to get in there, for that appeared to be the one part of the boat that was now free from it, and that really had saved them from going to the bottom. In the meantime the wind did not appear to be abating in the slightest. All that wretched forenoon the majority of the girls, half-dead from fright and exposure, clung desperately to the cushions of the locker seats, wild-eyed and despairing. All that forenoon Harriet Burrell, Jane McCarthy, Tommy, Hazel and Miss Elting stuck to their posts and worked without once pausing to rest. About noon the wind suddenly died out, then began veering in puffs from various quarters of the compass.
"Now, Jane, is our chance," cried Harriet. "The storm is broken, but the seas will be high all the rest of the day. If we can fix up some sort of a sail, we may be able to reach land before long."