“Douse your gab, and man the taff-rail!” yelled the captain; and Tom flew to obey him. “Light the top-lights!”
A couple of sailors to whom the trick is a mere bagatelle run nimbly out on the stern-sprit and execute his order; and none too soon, for darkness is closing in over the face of the waters, and the clouds come on apace.
A rumble of thunder, followed by a blinding flash, betokens that the squall is at hand. The captain springs adown the poop, and in a hoarse voice yells out: “Lower the maintop; loosen the shrouds; luff a little—steady! Cut the main-brace, and clear away the halyards. If we don’t look alive, we’ll look pretty durn dead in two shakes of a capstan-bar. All hands abaft for a glass of grog.”
The wild rush of sailors’ feet, the creaking of ropes, the curses of those in the rear, together with the hoarse cries of the gulls and the booming of the thunder, made up a scene that beggars description. Every trough of the sea was followed by a crest as formidable, and the salt spray had an indescribable brackish taste like bilge-water and ginger-ale.
After the crew had finished their grog they had time to look to starboard of the port watch, and there they beheld what filled them with pity. The entire sloop of mackerel-ships lay with their keels up.
“I knowed they’d catch it if they gaffed their studdin’sails,” said Tom, as he shifted the quid of oakum.
The full moon rose suddenly at the exact spot where the sun had set. The thunder made off, muttering. The cat-boat, close-rigged from hand-rail to taff-rail, scudded under bare poles, with the churning motion peculiar to pinnaces, and the crew involuntarily broke into the chorus of that good old sea-song:
The wind blows fresh, and our scuppers are astern.