“Got all the sail she wants?” he asked. “Is she fit to stand much more of it?”
“She should be safe with another plank in, but I was thinking of taking some of the canvas off her now,” said Weston.
Stirling hitched his twelve stone of flesh farther up to windward.
“Then,” he said, “until she puts that plank in you can let her go.”
A wisp of spray struck him in the face, but Weston, who saw the smile in his eyes, was curiously satisfied. It suggested, in the first place, an ample confidence in him, which was naturally gratifying, and in the second, that Stirling in spite of his years could take a keen pleasure in that particular form of the conflict between the great material forces and man’s nerve and skill. It is a conflict that goes on everywhere in the newer lands.
For another half-hour Weston kept the staggering over-canvased craft on her feet by a quick thrust of the tiller or a slackening of the sheet, and his companion appeared oblivious of the fact that he was getting wetter and wetter. She was fast, and she went through the little curling ridges with an exhilarating rush, while the foam swirled higher up her depressed deck, and the water flung up by her streaming bows beat in between her shrouds in showers. Then, when half the deck dipped under, Weston thrust down his helm, and the craft, rising upright, lay with her big mainsail thrashing furiously above her.
For ten minutes Weston was very busy with it, and, when he had hoisted it again with a strip along the foot of it rolled up, he crouched forward in the spray struggling with the big single headsail, which was a much more difficult matter. Once or twice he went in bodily when the hove-down bowsprit put which he crawled, dipped under, but he succeeded in tying up the foot of that sail too, and scrambled aft again breathless and gasping. He noticed that his employer, who did not seem to mind it, was almost as wet as he was.
“I’m sorry, but you told me I could let her go,” he apologized.
Stirling smiled somewhat dryly.
“I’m not blaming you; but you don’t quite finish. Wondering why I did it, aren’t you?”