“Get the cover off the second boat, and see everything clear for hoisting out,” commanded the skipper, and then called to Wyllard, “We’re close enough. You’d better heave her round.”
The schooner came around with a thrashing of canvas, stretched out seawards, and came back again with her deck sharply slanted and little puffs of spray blowing over her weather-rail, for there was no doubt that the breeze was freshening fast. Dampier now sent a man up into the foremast shrouds, and looked at Wyllard afterward.
“I’d heave a couple of reefs down if I wasn’t so anxious about that blamed boat,” he said. “As it is, I want to be ready to pick her up just as soon as we see her, and it’s quite likely she’d turn up when we’d got way off the schooner, and the peak eased down.”
Wyllard realized that Dampier was right as he glanced over the rail at the dimness that was creeping in on them. It was blowing almost fresh by this time, and the Selache was driving very fast through the swell, which began to froth here and there. It is, as he knew from experience, always hard work, and often impossible, to pull a boat to windward in any weight of breeze, which rendered it advisable to keep the schooner under way. If the boat drove by them while they were reefing it might be difficult to pick her up afterwards in the dark. He was now distinctly anxious about her. Just as the light was dying out, the man in the shrouds sent down a cry.
“I see them, sir!” he said.
Dampier turned to Wyllard with a gesture of relief. “That’s a weight off my mind. I wish we had a reef in, but”—he glanced up at the canvas—“she’ll have to stand it. Anyway, I’ll leave you there. We want to get that second boat lashed down again.”
This, as Wyllard recognized, was necessary, though he would rather have had somebody by him and the rest of them ready to let the mainsheet run, inasmuch as he was a little to windward of the opening, and surmised that he would have to run the schooner down upon the boat. It was a few moments later when he saw the boat emerge from the ice, and the men in her appeared to be pulling strenuously. They were, perhaps, half a mile off, and the schooner, heading for the ice, was sailing very fast. Wyllard lost sight of the boat again, for a thin shower of whirling snow suddenly obscured the light. Dampier called to him.
“You’ll have to run her off,” he said. “Boys, slack out your sheets.”
There was a clatter of blocks, and when Wyllard pulled his helm up it taxed all his strength. The Selache swung around, and he gasped with the effort to control her as she drove away furiously into the thickening snow. She was carrying far too much canvas, but they could not heave her to and take it off her now. The boat must be picked up first, and the veins rose swollen to Wyllard’s forehead as he struggled with the wheel. There is always a certain possibility of bringing a fore-and-aft rigged vessel’s main-boom over when she is running hard, and this is apt to result in disaster to her spars. So fast was the Selache traveling that the sea piled up in big white waves beneath her quarter, and, cold as the day was, the sweat of tense effort dripped from Wyllard as he foresaw what he had to do. First of all, he must hold the schooner straight before the wind without letting her fall off to leeward, which would bring the booms crashing over; then he must run past the boat, which he could no longer see, and round up the schooner with fore-staysail aback to leeward of her, to wait until she drove down on them.
This would not have been difficult in a moderate breeze, but the wind was blowing furiously and the schooner was greatly pressed with sail. He thought of calling the others to lower the mainsail peak, but with the weight of wind there was in the canvas he was not sure that they could haul down the gaff. Besides, they were busy securing the boat, which must be made fast again before they hove the other in, and it was almost dark now. In view of what had happened in the same waters one night, four years before, the desire to pick up the boat while there was a little light left became an obsession.