CHAPTER II
A TERRIBLE POSITION—A PROPHETIC VISION—SINKING!
When I had rubbed my eyes, and began to take in the surroundings, I felt drenched by the rain and sea. My hands were sticky, and cold and damp. My clothes clung to my limbs, which were stiff under me. My straw hat, with the ribbon of which I had been so proud—a yacht-club ribbon—was sopped, out of shape, and off-colour like my drenched face. The squall was still passing, but the thunder had ceased.
The sea was very lively, and the wind boisterous. We were running close-hauled and fast, dipping and slapping; the mainsail stretched stiffly over the boat, reefed still, and the jib was as taut as a board. Daddy, I thought, was steering splendidly in such a sea, but I at once perceived that the cliffs had sunk deep into the water behind us, and that the line of the horizon was continually broken with the rolling waves. A change, indeed, and in a few moments! A great change!
I sat up, feeling a peculiar sensation of dizziness, and a breathlessness, a desire to gasp for breath—a taste, moreover, of something unpleasant, almost sulphurous, but not of sulphur. Something had happened! I looked around me; astern I saw Tim gripping the sheet in one hand, the tiller in the other, and dragging at the sail, half in the boat, half out.
"What's the matter, Tim? Is the skipper asleep?"
I often called Murry the "skipper" for fun, as he called me his "young gentleman," meaning midshipman.
Tim made no reply. Perhaps my voice had not reached him, so I shouted at him—
"Tim, ahoy! Whither bound? What ship's this, anyhow?"