There was every need for haste too, for the storm had suddenly increased to almost the force of a tornado. The sun was sinking red and angrily away in the west-sou'-west, his last rays luridly lighting up the foam and spume of each breaking billow, and casting rusty rays even on the spray that was now dashing inboard high as the top of the funnel itself. There was no steam up, however, nor were there even banked fires, albeit the ship was not very far off land.
The Gurnet—for that was her name—was a screw gunboat of the very largest build then on the list, with six good Armstrongs on her deck, besides a monster pivot-gun forward.
She was a model. I don't say that because, many a long year after the date of my story, I myself sailed in her. But a model of beauty the Gurnet was, as good as ever sailor would care to look upon. Low in the water, with none too much freeboard, perhaps; rakish as to masts; bows like a clipper, without any merchant-service flimsiness about them though; and jib-boom like part of a picture. Solid and strong was she though, and as black all over as the wing of a rook, except where, just on the edges, her ports were picked out with vermilion.
"All hands shorten sail!"
Yes; and it is indeed time, with the wind howthering like that, tearing at the sails with angry jerks, and trying the strength of the sturdy ship from stem to stern, from bowsprit to rattling rudder-chains.
And she on a lee-shore!
Yes: the Gurnet had crossed the Bay of Biscay on the wings of a beautiful wind a trifle abaft the beam. She had passed the Gulf of Corunna, and was now just off Cape Finisterre, or Land's End as we would call it; but nobody, two hours ago, could have believed that the wind would pop round a point or two and come on to blow like this.
"Where in a' the warld are you goin' to, laddie?"
It was the doctor who spoke—Dr. Reikie, assistant-surgeon in charge—and as he sang out these words he caught young Midshipman Mackenzie by the lower part of his uniform, as he was struggling up the companion-ladder.
The clutch that he made at him was a very unceremonious one indeed, but a most effectual, for he hauled the middie right back and down into the steerage.