Both the Dane and Antonio knew the meaning of this, and the latter gave instant orders to set a storm-jib, and close reef the mainsail.
The girls were sent below in charge of Barclay, but Davie Drake put on an oilskin that he owned, and a yellow sou’-wester, and expressed his desire to stay on deck and see “the fun,” as he called it.
In ten minutes more the squall was on them in all its force. It was furious, terrible. Nothing could withstand it. The sheets were therefore loosened, the topsail lowered, and they commenced to scud before the wind.
Hatches were put close on, for the great green seas raced the Grebe and threatened every moment to poop her, while the salt spray dashed on board in clouds.
The force of this first squall was soon broken however, but around our shores, a squall of this kind is generally, as Antonio knew, followed by a gale. So it would be in this case, for the glass had gone down, down, down, and the column of mercury was still cup-shaped at top.
The gale too that sprang up and raised the seas higher and higher had a little bit of northerly in it, so that it would have been almost impossible to make for an English port.
“What do you advise, Petersen?” asked the captain, fixing him with his wonderful glass eye.
“There’s only one thing to do, sir, and that is to run for Dieppe, in France.”
“My own idea precisely.”
“One hundred and eighty miles, though,” he added. “The children will be safe, unless worse happens; but I grieve to think of the anxiety of their parents.”