“Going to put back,” he yelled to the prostrate man under the bow thwart. “Put back!”
“You can’t,” came the reply . . . and more coughing.
Of course he couldn’t. If he had thought for a moment he would have known it. Wind and tide would not let him put back. There was nothing for it but the twelve-mile thrash across the open bay to Porthleven; he prayed there might be a doctor there.
He luffed, sheeted home, rounded the great mass of Black Carn, braced as sharp as he dared and met a thunder clap of wind and sea. It might have been waiting for him round the corner, so surely did it pounce. It launched itself at him roaring, a ridge of crumbling white high overhead, a hill of water toppling over.
The loom and bellow of it stunned his senses, but habit is a strong master. His mind went blank, but his hand acted, automatically jamming the helm hard over. The gig had good way on; she spun as a horse spins on its hocks and met the monster just in time. Stood on her stern; rose, seesawed on the crest, three quarters of her keel bare, white tatters flying over her; walloped down into the trough as though on a direct dive to the bottom, recovered and rose to meet the next. The wild soar of the bows sent Anson slithering aft. Ortho heard him coughing under the stroke thwart.
“She’ll never do it,” he managed to articulate. “Veer an’ let . . . let . . . her drive.”
“Where for?” Ortho shouted. “Where for? D’you hear me?”
“Scilly,” came the answer, broken by dreadful liquid chokings.
The waves broke with less violence for a minute or two and Ortho managed to get the Gamecock away before the wind, though she took a couple of heavy dollops going about.
Scilly! A handful of rocks thirty miles away in the open Atlantic, pitch dark, no stars, no compass, the Runnelstone to pass, then the Wolf! At the pace they were going they would be on the Islands long before dawn and then it would be a case of exactly hitting either Crow Sound or St. Mary’s Sound or being smashed to splinters. Still it was the only chance. He would hug the coast as near as he dared till past the Runnelstone—if he ever passed the Runnelstone—and then steer by the wind; it was all there was to steer by.