“Yes, yes,” said Fitz, glancing round over the sunlit sea. “But what about the sharks?”
“Oh!” ejaculated Poole involuntarily, and he changed colour.
It was just as the skipper and mate came walking sharply forward again.
“There!” cried the latter triumphantly. “What did I say?”
“Splendid!” cried the skipper. “But will it last?”
“It did yesterday. Why not to-day?” cried the mate fiercely.
For the wind had suddenly come in a sharp gust which filled the sails, making several of them snap with a loud report, laid the schooner on her beam-ends, and sent her rushing through the water for some hundred yards, making it come foaming up through the scuppers in fountains, to flood the deck, before she was eased off by the man at the wheel and rose again.
But directly after the calm asserted itself once more; the greater part of the sea was like a mirror, with only cat’s-paws here and there; and the gunboat came pounding on as stern as fate.
“All right,” said the mate cheerily; “it’s coming again,” and he ran to the man at the wheel.
“Stand by, my lads,” cried the skipper, “ready to let go those stuns’ls. We mustn’t be taken again like that.”