The hiss of the seas that followed, the roar at the bows, the wild humming of the blast and the whirling spray stirred his blood. They were all of them tokens of what man could dare, and the strain, that human nerve could bear, for he knew that already hemp and wire and timber were being taxed to the uttermost, and that if the helmsman gave her a spoke too much or too little the next sea would curl on board or the great black mainsail jibe over and strew the Champlain's decks with ruin. Niven stood beside him, and Appleby saw that although his face was almost colourless in the moonlight, his eyes were shining.
"Oh, it's great!" he said. "Worth all we stood on board the Aldebaran to have a hand in this."
"And how many hands were ye born with when I see two av them holding ye where ye are?" said Donegal, who apparently heard him. "Is ut dollars or diversion a man goes to sea after?"
Niven laughed. "Dollars. Oh, get out! You know you feel it yourself," he said. "You've got everything just throbbing inside you as I have now."
Donegal grinned broadly. "And what if you're right?" he said. "'Tis born in the blood av the likes av me, but if I was the son av a ducal earl it's sorrow on the day would find me on the sea."
He got no further, but grabbed the lad's shoulder and held him fast as the Champlain swerved a little and a sea came in. It swirled about them icy cold as she rolled down to lee, and the scuppers were spouting when with a wild lurch she swung back to weather. Then Donegal thrust the pair of them aft together.
"Get a good hold an' keep it, until we have some need av ye," he said.
Then the blink of moonlight went out and the Champlain was alone, while the two lads shivered and dodged the spray as she swept onwards through the night, until a faint light crept out of the east across the whitened sea. The wet canvas showed black against it, there was a doleful wail of wind, and then when man's strength sinks to its lowest something happened. The Champlain put her bows in, and Jordan sprang suddenly up on the deckhouse gazing astern. What he said was scarcely audible, but the sealers apparently understood it, for the deck was filled with scrambling men. Down came the mainsail's peak, forward a slashing sail slid down, and the outer jib thrashed furiously above the bowsprit. Niven was clawing his way towards it when Stickine grasped his shoulder and flung him back.
"I guess this is going to be work for a man," he said.
Niven, who watched him crawl out along the bowsprit, held his breath when spar and man dipped into the sea, and then floundered aft to where the others were rolling up the foot of the half-lowered mainsail. It slatted and banged above them, and now and then the long boom beneath the foot of it that ran a fathom or more beyond the stern, swung in, for the schooner was coming up to the wind, but the rush and stress of the race had stirred his blood, and when it became evident that somebody was wanted there, he swung himself up on the foot-rope beneath its outer end as he otherwise might not have done. In another moment Appleby was up beside him, and Jordan standing at the wheel glanced dubiously at them. Then he nodded.