“Neptune! Boreas! Amphitrite! and all the little windy sea-gods, give us a breeze!” shouted Nickerson, laughing at McKenzie. He had hardly spoken, when, with the suddeness which is a characteristic of Gulf “blows,” the southerly began snapping up in savage squalls. The schooners to leeward were blotted out in the rainstorms, and the West Wind, with never a sheet started, dragged her lee rail under and the lower dead-eyes of the rigging tore through the broil of water to loo’ard and the scuppers frothed half-way up the deck. It was brave sailing, as over the short, savage seas the schooner plunged and reared, and clouds of spray enveloped her as she stormed along at fourteen knots.
Bang! With a report like a shot from a gun, the main-gafftopsail split, and within a moment slatted into a sunburst of ribboned rags. “Clew up what’s left!” bawled the skipper calmly, and to Donald he shouted. “A job o’ sail mending for you, son! I hope ye can handle palm an’ needle?”
The other grinned. “You bust ’em and I’ll sit up nights mending ’em,” he shouted excitedly. “This is what I call sailing! Give it to her, Skipper, and trim our friend Burton there.”
Nickerson nodded. “Leave it to me!” he replied grimly. “I’ll trim him or jump the masts out of this one, by Jupiter!” And by the look in his eyes, he meant it.
The rags of the topsail were scarce clewed up when another blast struck the West Wind and she rolled down until her whole lee deck vanished out of sight in the seething water. The gang jumped like scared cats for the weather rail and the port nest of dories, and from these places they actually looked down into the foaming water which churned and sloshed over the cable and the nest of dories on the starboard side. With the vessel heeling over at a dangerous angle, the men glanced nervously at the skipper, but that individual was hanging on to the wheel-spokes, chewing nonchalantly, and standing with his feet braced against the side of the wheel-box. “That guy’s a perishin’ terror!” shouted someone excitedly. “I wonder ef he knows what a vessel’ll stand? He’ll spill us all into th’ drink afore we’re through, by Judas!”
Cr-a-ack! Bang! Bang! Flap! Flap! A thundering row aloft—the big staysail was adrift, slatting and banging and threatening to whip the top-mast out of her. “Stays’l sheet’s carried away! Belayin’ pin broke!” cried a fisherman, and the skipper barked, “I reckon so! Get that sheet, boys, an’ make her fast again!”
A mob of oilskinned men slid down into the water to leeward and scrambled up the slack lee main rigging. Aloft, the sail was thrashing about and the sheet was whirling around like a whip and slashing at the rigging as the canvas flogged in the wind. When the rope flicked inboard, a dozen hands would make a grab for it.
“Shoot her up, Skipper—” shouted a fisherman.
“An’ be damned!” bawled Nickerson, with something of his old Kelvinhaugh truculence. “None o’ you fellows got guts enough to grab a loose bit o’ string? Don’t be scared of it—’twon’t bite ye!” Thus adjured, and after receiving some savage blows from the snapping rope, they managed to grab it, and while sixteen men stood up to their thighs in water laying their weight on the straining sheet which held the sail, Donald jammed an iron belaying pin into the rail and took a turn of the rope around it. With wild shouts and lurid phrases, the fishermen hauled in the slack and belayed, then returned, panting to their weather-side perches.
A man jumped out of the fo’c’sle companion in the sprays and clawed his way aft. He was laughing. “Golly, fellers, ye sh’d be below in th’ fo’c’sle naow!” he shouted above the roar of wind and sea. “Cook’s wild! She’s chucked all his pots off’n th’ stove an’ half his plates are smashed. Th’ fo’c’sle floor is slushin’ with pea-soup, rice pudding an’ beans an’ everything’s swilling with th’ water acomin’ daown th’ scuttle and th’ ventilator. Scotty’s in one hell of a rage and he’s alyin’ in his bunk cursin’ an’ swearin’ that he won’t cook or clean up a gol-derned thing ontil this here sail-draggin’ is over!”