XIII.
“The pilot is mad,” cried one old tar; and said,
“The master is drunk, or there’s mutiny aboard that ship.”
Thus spoke among themselves a knot of seafaring men who stood on the Boston docks watching a ship under almost full sail, that came tearing before a strong north-east gale into Boston’s crowded harbor.
The man who held the wheel and guided the ship through the lanes of sail-less vessels anchored in the harbor, as a skillful driver does his team in crowded streets, was neither mad nor drunk nor was there mutiny among the crew. The man was Jack Dunlap; the ship was the “Adams.”
Jack knew the harbor, as does the dog its kennel. He held a pilot’s certificate and waiving assistance steered his ship himself in this mad race with time, that no moment should be lost by lowering sails until the anchor dropped in Massachusetts sand.
The crew was ready at the sheets and running gear. Each man at his station and all attention. Old Brice in the waist stood watching the skipper ready to pass the word, to “let all go;” Morgan, the second mate, at the boat davits held the tackle to lower away the yawl the instant the ship “came round.”
The skipper at the wheel, stood steady, firm and sure, as though chiseled from hardest rock. He never shifted his blood-shot eyes from straight ahead. His strong, determined face, colorless beneath the tan, never relaxed a line of the intensity that stamped it with sharp angles. The skipper had not closed his eyes in sleep since leaving Port au Prince nor had he left the deck for a single hour.