Vane left the helm to Carroll and went below.
"He won't be long," Carroll informed the girl, with a smile. "He hasn't got rid of all his primitive habits yet. I'll give him ten minutes."
When Vane came up, he glanced about him before he resumed the helm and noticed that it was blowing fresher. They were also drawing out from the land and the short seas were getting bigger; but he held on to the whole sail, and an hour or so afterward a white iron bark, light in ballast, with her rusty load-line high above the water, came driving up to meet them. She made a striking picture, Evelyn thought, with the great curve of her forecourse, which was still set, stretching high above the foam that spouted about her bows and tier upon tier of gray canvas diminishing aloft. With the wind upon her quarter, she rode on an even keel, and the long iron hull, gleaming snowily in the sunshine, drove on, majestic, through a field of white-flecked green and azure. Abreast of one quarter, a propeller tug that barely kept pace with her belched out a cloud of smoke.
"Her skipper's been up here before—he's no doubt coming for salmon," Vane explained. Then he turned to Carroll. "We'd better pass to lee of her."
Carroll let a foot or two of a rope run out and the sloop's bows swung round a little. Her rail was just awash, and she was sailing very fast. Then her deck slanted more sharply and the low rail became submerged in rushing foam.
"We'll heave down a reef when we're clear of the bark," Vane said.
The vessel was now to windward and coming up rapidly; to shorten sail they must first round up the boat, for which they no longer had room. A few moments later a fiercer blast swept suddenly down and the water boiled white between the bark and the sloop. The latter's deck dipped deeper until the lower part of it was lost in streaming froth. Carroll made an abrupt movement.
"Shall I drop the peak?"
"No. There's the propeller close to lee."
The tug was hidden by the inclined sail, but Evelyn, clinging tightly to the coaming, understood that they were running into the gap between the two vessels and in order to avoid collision with one or the other, must hold on as they were through the stress of the squall. How much more the boat would stand she did not know, but it looked as if it were going over bodily. Then a glance at the helmsman's face reassured her. It was fixed and expressionless, but she somehow felt that whatever was necessary would be promptly done. He was not one to lose his nerve or vacillate in a crisis, and his immobility appealed to her, because she knew that if occasion arose it would be replaced by prompt decisive action.