"Let up!" he said. "Get down, half of you, and see if you can help them with the firing. We'll try her again when you have raised more steam."
There was, by contrast, a curious silence when the roar of steam died away, and the thudding of the big engines below decks sank to a lower pitch. The men who could be spared went down in a body, and toiled for another hour in a frenzy. The fierce Latin blood was up; they knew it was the last round, and they would not be beaten now. The throbbing blast which rushed skywards from the blow-off valve when they came up again showed what they had done, and Austin walked aft, singed and blackened, to his winch, with his heart in his mouth. It must be now or never, for it was clear to him that the men were making their last effort, and the boilers would not bear another pound of steam.
The windlass was groaning horribly when he opened the valve, and the whole ship trembled with the whirring of the screw. He saw the drums spin round futilely for a moment or two, and then the Spaniard, who crouched behind one of them, howled, as a foot of the uncoiling wire came back to his hands. Simultaneously, the groaning of the windlass changed to a clanking rattle, and no sound had ever seemed half so musical to Austin. The ship shook beneath him, and creaked in all her frame, while the hammering and rattling swelled into a frantic din as she commenced to move. He felt as though he were choking, and his sight momentarily failed him; but as yet the battle was not quite won, and closing blackened fingers on the valve-wheel, he watched the rope come home with dazzled eyes. It ran in faster and faster; he could hear the great stud-cable splashing and grinding as it came in, too, and for five breathless minutes he held himself to his task, feeling the Cumbria creep down stream, stern foremost, under him. Then her pace grew faster, and the clanging of his winch seemed to deafen him, until at last a shrill-pitched voice fell through the din.
"Bastante!" it said. "She's clear now! 'Vast heaving!"
Then the tension slackened as the long, rusty hull swung out into midstream, and flesh and blood were left shaken, and, as yet, unable to recover from the suddenly lifted strain in the silence, as winch and engines stopped. Tom, the donkey-man, was chanting some incoherent ribaldry forward; here and there a Canario howled or flung up dripping arms; while the one beside Austin sat down upon the hatch and rocked himself to and fro as he called upon the Queen of Heaven. Only Jefferson stood very still, a tall, lean figure, on the bridge, with his torn and drenched clothing sticking to him, and Austin leaned heavily upon his winch. He did not wish to move, and was not sure he could have done so had he wanted to. The Cumbria was clear afloat, and they had won; but there was nothing he could say or do which would sufficiently celebrate that triumph.
Jefferson gave them five minutes to recover their balance, and then his voice came down again. The windlass clanked its hardest, wire hawsers splashed, and the Cumbria had swung across to the opposite forest when the big anchor rose to her bows. In the meanwhile the surfboat had been busy, too; and when the winch whirred again they slid away, stern foremost, with propeller churning slowly, against the muddy stream. It was twenty minutes later when, with a roar of running cable, the anchor plunged once more, and she brought up abreast of the creek where the coal and oil were stored. Jefferson came down from his bridge and sat down on the table in the skipper's room when Austin flung himself on to the settee, with the water trickling from him.
"Well," he said, "we have floated her, but there's still a good deal to be done. There are the coal and oil to get on board, and then we have to find the gum."
Austin looked up at him with a little smile.
"That's rather a prosaic epilogue when one comes to think of it," he said.
"Then you can paint a picture of it when you get home, if you fancy it worth while," said Jefferson drily.