Black Pawl ate little while the gale endured. No man could eat, on that racking, pitching deck. He kept up his strength with whisky, raw from the bottle; and the stuff burned into his blood and warmed him and numbed him.
Dan Darrin remonstrated with him more than once. “Let that be; and put red victuals into you, sir,” he urged. But Black Pawl laughed at him.
“This is my meat,” he told Dan, lifting the bottle. “This is mine; you stick to yours.”
Dan had never seen him so strong, so powerful and so sure. It was as though he fought the fury of wind and sea, alone, breasting the tempest for the sake of those aboard the schooner, and protecting them with his own strong body. It was like a personal triumph in battle for Black Pawl when on the third morning the wind perceptibly slackened, and the ravenous teeth of the waves became blunted and dull.
Nevertheless all that day and all that night the Deborah was rocked and swung and racked in the hammock of the seas; and it was not till the fourth day that they saw the sun through the graying clouds, and Black Pawl got a sight at her. On this last day, the Captain had eaten something; but he had not left the deck, and he had not slept. “There’s land hereabouts,” he told Dan Darrin when Dan protested. “I’ll rest when I know just where we are—and not before.”
They were able, by this time, to take some stock of the damage the storm had done. At first glimpse, the Deborah was a derelict, shattered and helpless. But that was to the casual and ignorant eye. True, the bowsprit was split, the foremast sprung, the rigging broken here and there, and hopelessly snarled forward. But the mainmast was as stoutly seated as before the tempest; and they were taking no water save the normal leakage of a healthy ship. The hull was sound.
“However,” Black Pawl decided, when he knew what there was to know, “however, we’re in no trim for the long way ahead. We’ll make land, Dan, and put in a day or so in fetching her back to shape again. It’s no great job; and it’s got to be done.”
Dan agreed with him. A whaler carries in herself everything she is likely to need in three or four years away from home, save only food and firewood. They could find shelter among the islands and repair the rigging and strengthen or replace the split bowsprit and the racked foremast. They would want sticks that could be counted on in the rough waters about the Horn.
When they got their sight at the sun, and Black Pawl pricked their location upon the chart, he nodded with satisfaction and clapped Dan on the back. “No more than half a day’s run,” he told the second mate. “There’s shelter, and water, and islanders to help us if we need. Run her in, Dan—you and Red Pawl. I’m minded to sleep a bit before we’re there.”
They made the island at late dusk, but Red Pawl would not try the passage into the lagoon in the dark, and he stood off and on till morning. Then they worked in, and anchored a mile or more offshore. There was no town there—the place was little more than a coral atoll; but there were a few native huts. And there was the shelter they needed for their own security while they made their repairs. The mate set the work afoot as soon as the anchor was in the mud; and he and Dan Darrin drove them, while Black Pawl slept roundly in his cabin below.