"We have got to try," said Jimmy quietly. "There's a point that would give us shelter twenty miles away."
"Twenty miles!" and the engineer, from whose blackened singlet the water streamed, laughed scornfully. "It's 'bout as likely we'd tow her to Honolulu. Still, I guess you're skipper."
Jimmy nodded. He had not troubled to impress the fact upon his crew, but he invariably acted on it. "You had better raise a little more steam," he said; "it is very likely that we'll want it."
Then, as the dripping engineer vanished from the bridge, he seized the whistle lanyard, and signed to the man behind him who gripped the wheel. A deep blast rent the turmoil of the sea, and the Shasta, swinging around a trifle, rolled away to the rescue. It was some twenty minutes later when she stopped, and lay plunging head to sea with the little wallowing schooner close to lee of her. The light was going, but Jimmy could see a shapeless figure that clung to her rail gesticulating with flung-up arm. The wreck of a boat, apparently smashed by the falling mast, lay across her hatch, and there was another half-seen man at her wheel. Jimmy stood still for a few moments with his hand on the telegraph, and he was glad to remember that there were several former sealing-schooner hands among his crew, for what they do not know about boat-work is worth no man's learning.
He let the Shasta swing a little to give them a lee on one side of her, and while the sea smote and spouted in green cataracts across her weather-rail they swung a boat over, and two men, one of whom was a Siwash, dropped into her. That was enough to steer her while she blew to windward, and Jimmy dared risk no more. They got her away, apparently undamaged, and he sent the Shasta slowly ahead when she plunged over a seatop veiled in a cloud of spray. It would be beyond the power of flesh and blood to pull that boat back, and the Shasta swung in a wide half-circle to leeward of the schooner. Her crew had evidently tried to heave her to, but without her after-canvas she had fallen off again, and was forging ahead with the Shasta's boat smothered in foam beneath her rail. She was going to leeward bodily, and Jimmy fancied she was about a mile nearer the crag than when he had first seen her. It was evident to everybody that he had no time to lose.
He shouted with arm flung up, and, though it was doubtful whether anybody heard him, the schooner's boom foresail came thrashing down, and two men who leapt upon her rail fell into the boat. Then he thrust down his telegraph, and, as the Shasta forged by, the boat drove down on her. She struck the steamer's hove-up side with a crash that stove several strakes of planking in, and men jumped for the flung-down lines as she filled. They scrambled up them, four in all, and, for one of them had hooked on the davit falls, the Shasta's winch banged and rattled as they hove the boat in with the water streaming out through her shattered side at every roll. The men had, however, brought a rope with them, and the winch next hove the schooner's stoutest hawser off. It was made fast, and rose splashing from the sea when Jimmy touched his telegraph again, while, when at last the schooner fell into line astern, a very wet man clambered to the bridge.
"Are you fit to pull her out?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Jimmy; "I'm going to try. How did you get so far inshore, and have you left anybody to steer her?"
The man made a vague gesture. "Mainmast went beneath the hounds. She's been driving to leeward since, and she'd have been ashore in another hour if we hadn't fallen in with you. The old man's at her wheel. Built her himself 'most fifteen years ago, and nothing would shift him out of her."
Jimmy glanced astern, and for a few moments saw a gray face of rock loom out of the haze with the sea spouting dimly white at its feet. Then a thicker fold of vapor rolled about it, and the daylight faded suddenly. He could scarcely see the schooner lurching along behind them with jib still set, though the sail thrashed now and then. Indeed, his eyes were growing very heavy, and he realized that after forty-eight hours' continuous watching he could not keep himself awake much longer. A simple calculation showed him that it would be daylight again before he could put his helm up and run for shelter, when it would be imperatively necessary for him to be on his bridge; and calling his Scandinavian mate, he left the Shasta in his charge.