“What about your cables?” said I. “Have you got them bent and an anchor ready to let go if she should happen to back off the bank?”
“No,” said he, coming to a halt again. “We’ve been so busy with one thing and another, you know. But I’ll have it done as soon as we’ve got the canvas on her.”
“Better do that first, hadn’t you?” I suggested. “I wouldn’t trust the kedge to hold her in a breeze with all her square canvas set.”
“N–o, perhaps not,” he agreed dubiously. “Well, then, I’ll get the port cable bent and the anchor a-cockbill ready for lettin’ go before touchin’ the canvas. How would that be?”
“Much the safest, I think,” said I. “But let us both go for’ard and see what is the exact state of affairs there. And what is the state of the hawser? Ah, still quite taut!” as I tested its tension with my foot.
Arrived upon the forecastle we found both anchors stowed inboard and the cables below; but, all hands being called, including the Shark’s, we made short work of the business, for while one gang went below and cleared away the cable, another roused it up on deck and rove it through the hawse-pipe, ready for bending, and a third got the anchor outboard. Then, while Jones, the Shark’s boatswain’s mate, and his party bent the cable and got everything ready for letting go, in case of need, Carter’s men climbed into the rigging, and, beginning at the topgallant-sails, loosed all the square canvas, overhauled the gear, and saw everything clear for sheeting home and hoisting away. To set the canvas and trim the yards aback was now the work of but a few minutes, and it was soon done, with the immediate result that the ship, from having a slight list to starboard, came upright, with just the slightest possible tendency to heel to port.
“Now, Mr Carter,” said I, “the ship’s bilge is no longer bearing upon the sand. I think, therefore, that if I were you I would send all hands to the windlass, and let them endeavour to get another pawl or two. That canvas is doing good work up there, and it may be that if we helped it a bit with a pull on the hawser she would come off.”
“Ay,” agreed Carter; “so she might, and we’ll try it. Man the windlass, lads, and see if you can move her at all. Half an hour’s work now may get the ship afloat, and so save ye a good many hours breakin’ out cargo to-morrow.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” answered the men, cheerfully enough, considering that they had been awakened out of a sound sleep and dragged out of their warm bunks to come up and work in the chill, pestilential fog after having worked hard all day. “Tail on to the handles, my bullies, tail on and heave. Heave, and raise the dead!” shouted the man Mike, who had been one of the lucky five to escape capture by the savages.
They got their first pawl easily enough, then another, and another, by which time the hawser was once more as taut as a bar. But, as I lightly rested my foot upon it, to test its tautness, I felt it very gradually slackening, which meant one of two things, either that the kedge was coming home—which I thought improbable—or that the ship was very slowly sliding off the bank. So I cried to the men, who had desisted from their efforts for fear of parting the hawser: