“Hallo! this is serious,” said Birger, as a heavy sea struck the weather paddle-box, and broke over them in spray: for the tide had been gradually rising, without, as yet, raising the ship; and, as she lay over to windward, the seas that now began to break upon her starboard bow and side, deluged her from stem to stern.
“Upon my soul,” said the Captain, “I don’t like this, myself; and there sits the Parson, fishing away, as quietly as if he were on the pier at Boveysand. By Jove, Nero fiddling while Rome was burning, is a fool to him! Why, Parson, don’t you think there is some danger in all this?”
“‘Er det noget Færde?’ as your friend the professor would say,” said the Parson, laughing. “I do not think it improbable that the Walrus will leave her bones here, if you mean that.—Stop, I’ve got another bite!”
“Confound your bite! If she leaves her bones here, we shall leave ours too; for she has not boats for the fourth of us, the devil take them! and as for expecting help from these rascally colliers——”
“You may just as well fiddle to the dolphins,” said the Parson. “I know that; but do you see that little cutter,—that fellow, I mean, on our quarter, that has just tacked? and there beyond her is another, that is now letting fly her jib-sheet. I have been watching those fellows all the morning, beating out from Harwich. They are having a race, and a beautiful race they make of it: you cannot tell yet which has the best of it. If those cutters were going over to the Dutch coast, you may depend upon it they would not make such short boards. There—look—the leading one is in stays again. Those fellows are racing for us, and with our ensign Union down, as we have it, we shall make a pretty good prize for the one that gets first to us. Those two are pilot-boats. You may depend upon it, we are not going to lay our bones here, whatever comes of the Walrus.”
The Parson’s anticipations were realised sooner than he expected, for a long low life-boat, that nobody had seen till she was close alongside, came up, carrying off the prize from both competitors—and preparations were begun, which ought to have been completed hours before, for laying out an anchor.
Before long, the cutters also had worked up and anchored on the lee edge of the shoal, to the great relief of every one on board; for the seas were by this time making such a breach over her, that no one could be ignorant of the danger.
Suddenly, and without preparation, she righted, throwing half the passengers off their legs, and very nearly precipitating the Parson into the sea; who took that as a hint to leave his seat in the dingy. Soon afterwards she began to bump, first lightly, and then more heavily, and the paddles were set in motion. The windlass was manned and worked; but the shifting sand afforded no good holding-ground for the anchor, which had not been backed—nor, indeed, had any precautions been taken whatever—and as soon as there was any strain upon it, it came home and was perfectly useless.
The ship now was hanging a little abaft the chess-tree, on the very top of the spit; but the stern was free, and the bows were actually in the deep water of the turnhole, while at every bump she gained an inch or two: just then, the anchor coming home, and the tide taking her under the port bow, she ran up in the wind, and pointed for the very centre of the shoal.
“Why the devil don’t you set your jib?” bellowed out the Captain, who had begun to get excited. “Where the deuce is that know-nothing Skipper of yours?”