The Arab cast another gloomy glance at the reef, shrugged his shoulders with racial fatalism, and went forward to call up the men. Henninger dashed below, came up with an axe, and started toward the bow.
“Stop! You’re not going to cut that cable. Don’t you know that the bight’ll fly up and kill you?” shouted Bennett, intercepting him.
“That’s so. I forgot,” admitted Henninger, pausing.
“But the whole scheme is mad—suicidal,” Bennett added, angrily.
“No, let’s get away at any risk!” exclaimed Margaret, who had come on deck.
“Halloo, you must go below again,” said Elliott. “Or, wait a moment.” He cut loose a life-belt and buckled it round her. “Perhaps you had better stay on deck after all, for as like as not we’re going to the bottom. Hang on to the dhow if we strike, and don’t let yourself get carried against the rocks. I’ll look after you.”
The Arab seamen were stationing themselves about the deck without a protest of word or gesture against the dangerous manœuvre that was to be attempted, and Elliott’s courage rose at the sight of their coolness. The danger of the attempt lay almost wholly in the thick darkness. The gap was nearly thirty yards wide, and the weather had shifted so far to the east that the dhow could run out with a wind abeam, provided that she could hit the gap. But there were no lights, no steering guides, but the indistinct break in the whiteness of the surf, and the vague difference in the tone of the breakers where the reef interposed no barrier.
The reis took the tiller, and a seaman went forward, picked up the axe which Henninger had dropped, and scanned the cable narrowly. Dextrously, carefully, he struck three light blows with the steel, cutting it partly through, and skipped back out of danger. The dhow heaved; a sensation of rending ran from the bows throughout her timbers; and suddenly, with a bang like a gunshot, the cable parted, and the dhow began to drift rapidly, stern first.
The reis shouted in guttural Arabic, and sheet and tiller brought her round. She began to run diagonally toward the island, heading almost straight for the hill, with the wind abeam. In the bows a seaman cast a short lead-line incessantly, calling the depth with a weird cry. The sky was clearing slightly, as Hawke had said, and Henninger had observed it with a worried expression. The dhow’s spread of white canvas would be visible in the night where the black hull of the steamer would remain unseen, and their only chance lay in making open water and running below the horizon before they were sighted by the speedier craft.
After a short tack the dhow went about, and headed back as she had come. The crucial moment was at hand. The reis stared ahead, stooping slightly to get a clear view under the sails, though to Elliott’s eyes the darkness was impenetrable.