It was now near sundown, the wind began to blow in fitful gusts, and once in a while, amid the constant dash of waves, a great sea would come and break with a roar far above the general dash of waters. But they were too eager in the pursuit of their prize to heed the weather.
At length a few drops of rain falling on the captain’s bare arms caused him to look up and around.
He instantly exclaimed,—
“Haul in your lines; we must be out of this; we are full near enough to these breakers to have them under our lee, and night coming on.”
It was a most perilous position to the eye of a landsman, and not without risk to them. The vessel was rolling heavily at her anchor less than a quarter of a mile from the rock, and abreast of the middle and highest part of it, while its long, shoal points stretched out each way for more than a mile, white with foam; the whole ground also, for three or four miles around the rock, was full of shoal spots and sunken reefs, which made a bad, irregular sea; and the roar from so many breakers was terrible. But if there is anything that will do its duty in a heavy head-beat sea, it is an old-fashioned pinkie.
As the little craft, gathering way, came up to the wind, the sea poured in floods over her bows, while, with whole sail and her lee rail under water, she jumped through it, and gradually drew off from the dangerous reefs.
Leaving the long reefs to the leeward, they now kept away before it with a fair wind for home. Taking in all but the foresail, they went along under moderate sail, that they might split their fish as they went, and before dark.
When they reached the island, it was quite dusk. The sea was pouring in sheets of foam upon the rocks, and the white froth, drifting to leeward, had filled the main channel; so that to enter it seemed, to an inexperienced eye, to be rushing into the very jaws of destruction; but, as they dashed along by the very edge of the surf that fringed the “Junk of Pork,” just when the little vessel, rising on the crest of a tremendous wave, seemed to be rushing directly on the rocks, Ben, who stood at the fore-sheet, hauled it aft, the captain put down his helm, and the vessel, luffing up, shot through the froth and around the point into the quiet harbor in front of the house. Uncle Isaac let go the anchor, and in a moment she was peacefully riding where there was not a ripple, with the roar of surf all around her, and bunches of white froth drifting lazily alongside.
It is these strong contrasts which make the charm of life along shore, and that so attach rugged spirits to the sea; and though those who live among these scenes do not talk about them as others do, who seldom witness them, yet they feel them, and they are a part of their life. Taking out the birds and guns, they put them into the canoe to take on shore. Charlie met them there, and was dumb with astonishment at the sight of so many birds.