“Mr Roberts, what think you of the outlook?”
“A very poor one, captain. But I have been looking at the land, sir, and hazy though it is I find we are right off the bar of Lamoo.”
“Why, then, we must have been driven back many many miles; we were off Brava last night.”
“I reckon, sir, we made up our leeway at times like, when there was a bit of a shift of wind, and lost it again when it veered. But our only chance now is to head for that bar, sir.”
“You’ve been over it?”
“I have, sir, many is the time; and I’ll try to pilot the good Niobe over it now.”
“Very well, Mr Roberts, you shall try; if you succeed, you are a made man, if you fail—”
“All,” said the boatswain, “I knows what failure’ll mean, sir.”
Half an hour afterwards, stripped of nearly every inch of canvas save what sufficed to steer her, with four men at the wheel, and the sturdy pilot guiding them with hand movements alone—for his voice could not be heard amid the raging of the storm and awful roar of the breaking billows that were everywhere around them—the brave Niobe was rushing stem on through the mountain seas that rolled shorewards over the most dreaded bar on all the African coast.