VI
THE CAMP AT THE DUCK'S HEAD
When Skipper Zeb's oar broke, the boat, now at the mercy of the wind, was driven upon a submerged rock at the tip end of the reef extending some twenty yards out from the cliff known as the Duck's Head. Here it stuck for what seemed to Charley a long time, reeling in the surf until he was quite certain it would roll over and they would all be drowned. Mrs. Twig, clinging with Violet to the mainmast, gave a shrill cry of despair, and Violet screamed in terror. Then a mighty sea lifted them like a chip from the rock, and swept the boat onward and beyond the reef.
Rolling and wallowing in the angry sea, which threatened every moment to swallow it up, the boat still floated to the astonishment of all, and Skipper Zeb and Toby, with feverish zeal shipping a fresh oar, began sculling toward the sheltered and calm waters under the lee of the Duck's Head.
The wind in their quarter helped them, and with a few mighty strokes of the oar the boat was carried beyond the reach of the rollers, and a few minutes later, submerged to her gunwale, grounded upon a narrow strip of gravelly beach on the western side of the Duck's Head, and Skipper Zeb carried Violet ashore, while the other half drowned and half frozen voyageurs followed.
A quantity of driftwood lined the base of the cliff. With an ax, which Skipper Zeb recovered from the boat, he quickly split some sticks, whittled shavings with his jack-knife from the dry hearts of the split sticks, lighted these with a match from a supply which he carried in a small corked bottle, and which were thus protected from the water, and in an incredibly short time a cheerful fire was blazing.
"Well, now!" Skipper Zeb exclaimed, genially, warming his hands before the fire. "Here we are safe and sound and none of us lost, as I were fearin' when we strikes the rock we might be! All of us saved by the mercy of the Lard! How is you feelin' now, Vi'let?"
"I feels fine, with the fire," answered Violet, who was snuggling close to her mother.