"Longer, I'm afraid. 'Most always we have one good, big norther in August that blows two or three days. I'm really the one to blame for getting us into this mess. I know the sea, and you don't. I ought to have had brains enough to stop on Seal Island. Well, it's no use crying over spilled milk. The only thing now is to try not to spill any more."
The rain was descending in torrents. Storm and night drew a narrow circle of gloom about the reeling boat.
Spurling tried to rise to his feet. The dory jumped like a bucking horse, and he caught the gunwale just in time to escape being pitched overboard.
"Jerusalem!" he gasped. "Guess I won't try that again! Hands and knees are good enough for me. Hold her, Perce! I'll throw out some of this water."
Kneeling in the flood that swashed from bow to stern, he bailed vigorously until the boat was fairly clear.
"No use wearing ourselves out trying to keep her head to it with the oar!" said he. "I'm going to rig a drug!"
Directly under Percy's arms, as he sculled, was a trawl-tub containing their purchases at Matinicus. These Jim tossed into the stern. Taking the tub, he crept forward. A lanyard of six-thread manila, put across double between holes in the top of its sides, formed a rope bridle or bail. To the middle of this bail Jim tied the thirty-foot painter with a clove hitch. Then he dropped the tub over the bow.
"Pull in your oar, Perce!" he called out.
Percy obeyed gladly. A heavy sea struck the dory. She reared, shot back, and started to swing sidewise. Then the "drug" caught her, and she seesawed again up into the wind and rode springily.
The tub, filled with water, and drifting on its side thirty feet before the bow at the end of the straightened-out painter, formed a floating anchor, which held the dory head to the wind and sea. Practically submerged, and offering the gale no surface to get hold of, it moved much more slowly than the high-sided boat, and so retarded its course.