The second day passed much like the first, but the sun set cloudily, and it rained during the night. At daybreak the wind was much fresher, and it strengthened during the forenoon, veering more to the east. At noon the dhow was heeling over heavily, and an hour later the skipper ordered a reef taken in the mainsail. The good wind continued to smarten until by the middle of the afternoon it was difficult to maintain footing on the sloping and slippery deck. The sky was a flat, windy gray; the sea had not a tinge of blue, and was covered with sweeping white-crested rollers, through which the Omeyyah ploughed nobly. Occasionally she took one over the bows with a bursting smash, sending a drenching cascade over the decks clear to the stern. It took two men to hold the kicking tiller-head, and the adventurers clung to the rigging upon the windward side, disregarding a ducking that could not be avoided, for it seemed that oilskins was the one item of equipment that had been forgotten.
“How fast are we going?” Margaret cried to Elliott, trying to keep her wet hair out of her eyes. The rattle and creak of the straining rigging and blocks almost drowned her voice.
“Thirteen knots, last time the log was taken,” Elliott shouted back.
She made a gesture of triumph; at that rate they would surely win. Henninger came up unsteadily, holding to the rail, with his wet linen clothes clinging to him like a bathing-suit.
“The reis wants to run for shelter somewhere on the coast,” he shouted. “He’s afraid we’re running right into a monsoon or something.”
“Tell him to go to the deuce!” cried Elliott. “This is just what we want, and more of the same sort.”
“That’s what I think,” said Henninger, and he retraced his difficult way to the stern, where the Arab skipper himself stood beside the helmsmen. Abdullah seemed to object to the recklessness of his employer, and apparently a violent altercation ensued, but drowned at a distance of ten feet by wind and water. It must have ended in the submission of the reis, for the dhow continued to drive ahead, half under water and half above it.
Meals were only a pretence that day. The hatches had been battened down, and no one left the deck, but Elliott brought a quantity of biscuits and canned salmon from the galley, which every one ate where he stood. It rained furiously that night, and with the rain the wind seemed to moderate, in spite of the fears of the skipper. During the next forenoon it remained intermittently fresh, but remained powerful enough to drive the dhow at an average speed of ten knots all day. By sunset, Henninger calculated that they must have run nearly nine hundred miles, and should sight Mohilla Island the next day, supposing they were neither too far east nor west. It had been impossible to take an observation for the last two days, so that his estimate could not be verified.
It rained again early the next morning, but cleared brilliantly in an hour or two, and the decks steamed. Sullivan, who had learned to take an observation, brought up a second-hand sextant and a chronometer of doubtful accuracy, and these instruments indicated at noon that the expedition was about forty miles south-southwest of the desired point. Allowing for errors, they should sight the wreck before sunset.
The breeze had been gradually failing all day, but it had served its purpose, and it would certainly last till dark. The course was hauled more to the northwest, and Henninger himself ascended into the main-rigging with a good glass, while the rest of the party clustered at the bows. As the dhow glided easily over the shimmering sea, every eye was strained, not so much in search of the island as for sail or steam that would tell them that they had been anticipated at the wreck. About three o’clock Sullivan disappeared from the deck, and Elliott, who had occasion to go below, found him unpacking the rifles and putting clips of cartridges into the magazines.