“By God, mate!” she exclaimed of a sudden. “The barrels are keeping us up—the empty barrels in the hold. Hoh! we'll make land yet.”
It was true. The empty hogsheads, destined for the storage of oil, had been forced up by the influx of the water to the roof of the hold, and were acting as so many buoys—the schooner could sink no lower. An hour later, the quarterdeck all awash, her bow thrown high into the air, listing horribly to starboard, the “Bertha Millner” took ground on the shore of Magdalena Bay at about the turn of the tide.
Moran swung herself over the side, hip deep in the water, and, wading ashore with a line, made fast to the huge skull of a whale half buried in the sand at that point.
Wilbur followed. The schooner had grounded upon the southern horn of the bay and lay easily on a spit of sand. They could not examine the nature of the leak until low water the next morning.
“Well, here we are,” said Moran, her thumbs in her belt. “What next? We may be here for two days, we MAY be here for two years. It all depends upon how bad a hole she has. Have we 'put in for repairs,' or have we been cast away? Can't tell till to-morrow morning. Meanwhile, I'm hungry.”
Half of the stores of the schooner were water-soaked, but upon examination Wilbur found that enough remained intact to put them beyond all fear for the present.
“There's plenty of water up the creek,” he said, “and we can snare all the quail we want; and then there's the fish and abalone. Even if the stores were gone we could make out very well.”
The schooner's cabin was full of water and Wilbur's hammock was gone, so the pair decided to camp on shore. In that torrid weather to sleep in the open air was a luxury.
In great good spirits the two sat down to their first meal on land. Moran cooked a supper that, barring the absence of coffee, was delicious. The whiskey was had from aboard, and they pledged each other, standing up, in something over two stiff fingers.
“Moran,” said Wilbur, “you ought to have been born a man.”