Dampier nodded. "Three days," he said. "Just now the breeze is on her quarter."
He winced under Wyllard's gaze, and spread his hands out deprecatingly.
"Now," he added, "what else was there I could do? She wrung her masthead off when you jibed her and there's not stick enough left to set any canvas that would shove her to windward, I might have hove her to, but the first time the breeze hauled easterly she'd have gone up on the beach or among the ice with us. I had to run!"
Wyllard closed a feeble hand. "Dunton was crippled, too. It's almost incredible."
"In one way, it looks like that, but, after all, a jibe's quite a common thing with a fore-and-after. If you run her off to lee when she's going before it her mainboom's bound to come over. Of course, nobody would run her off in a wicked breeze unless he had to, but you'd no choice with the ice in front of you."
Wyllard lay very still for almost a minute. It was clear to him that his project must be abandoned for that season, which meant that at least six months must elapse before he could even approach the Kamtchatkan coast again.
"Well," he said at length, "what do you mean to do?"
"If the breeze holds we could pick up one of the Aleutians in a few days, but I'm keeping south of them. There'll probably be ugly ice along the beaches, and I've no fancy for being cast ashore by a strong tide when the fog lies on the land. With westerly winds I'd sooner hold on for Alaska. We could lie snug in an inlet there, and, it's quite likely, get a cedar that would make a spar. I can't head right away for Vancouver with no mainsail."
This was clear to Wyllard, who made a feeble gesture. "If the wind comes easterly?"
Dampier pursed his face up. "Then unless I could fetch one of the Kuriles we'd sure be jammed. She won't beat to windward, and there'd be all Kamtchatka to lee of us. The ice is packing up along the north of it now, and the Russians have two or three settlements to the south. We don't want to run in and tell them what we're after."