He crawled into his berth early, and it was some time after midnight when he was awakened by being rudely flung out of it. That fact, and the slant of deck and sounds above, suggested that the schooner had been struck down by a sudden gale. He had grown more or less accustomed to such occurrences and to sleeping fully dressed, and in another moment or two he was out of the deck-house. A sharp wind drove stinging flakes of snow into his face. It was very dark, but he guessed that the schooner’s rail was in the sea, which was washing the decks, and that some of the crew were struggling to get the mainsail off her. A man whom he supposed to be Charly ran into him.
“Better come for’ard. Got to haul outer jib down before it blows away!” he shouted.
Up to his knees in water, Wyllard staggered after him and made out by the mad banging that some one had already cast the peak of the boom-foresail loose. He reached the windlass, and clutched it, as a sea that took him to the waist frothed in over the weather rail. The bows lurched out of it viciously, hurling another icy flood back on him, and he could see a dim white chaos of frothing water about and beneath them. Above rose the black wedge of the jibs.
He did not want to get out along the bowsprit to stop one of them down, but there are many things flesh and blood shrink from which must be faced at sea. He made out that a Siwash was fumbling at the down-haul made fast near his side, and when the man’s shadowy figure rose up against the whiteness of the foam he made a jump forward. Then he was on the bowsprit, lying upon it while he felt for the foot-rope slung beneath. He found it, and was cautiously lowering himself when the man in front of him called out harshly, and he saw a white sea range up ahead. It broke short over with a rush and roar, and he clung with hands and feet for his life as the schooner’s dipping bows rammed the seething mass.
The vessel went into it to the windlass. Wyllard was smothered in an icy flood that seemed bent on wrenching him from his hold, but that was only for a moment or two, and then, streaming with water, he was swung high above the sea again. It was bad enough merely to hold on, but that was a very small share of his task, for the big black sail that cut the higher darkness came rattling down its stay and fell upon him and his companion. As it dropped the wind took hold of the folds of it and buffeted them cruelly. As he clutched at the canvas it seemed to him incredible that he had not already been flung off headlong from the reeling spar. Still, that banging, thrashing canvas must be mastered somehow, though it was snow-soaked and almost unyielding, and with bleeding hands he clawed at it furiously while twice the bowsprit raked a sea and dipped him waist-deep into the water. At last, the other man flung him the end of the gasket, and they worked back carefully, leaving the sail lashed down, and scrambled aft to help the others who were making the big main-boom fast. When this was done Wyllard fell against Dampier and clutched at him.
“How’s the wind?” he roared.
“Northeast,” answered the skipper.
They could scarcely hear each other, though the schooner was lurching over it more easily now with shortened canvas, and Wyllard made Dampier understand that he wished to speak to him only by thrusting him towards the deck-house door. They went in together, and stood clutching at the table with the lamplight on their tense, wet faces and the brine that ran from them making pools upon the deck.
“The wind has hauled round,” said the skipper, “the wrong way.”
Wyllard made a savage gesture. “We’ve had it from the last quarter we wanted ever since we sailed, and we sailed nearly three months too late. We’re too close in to the beach for you to heave her to?”