It was not possible, with safety, to cut across the reach straight for the main, so the Cap'n quartered his course before the wind and went swinging down the seas, with little chance of coming soon to shore, but confident of his seamanship.
But that seamanship was not sufficient to embolden him into an attempt to dodge a steamer with two masts and a dun funnel that came rolling out from behind Eggemoggin and bore toward him up the reach. He was too old a sailor not to know that she was the patrol cutter of the revenue service; wind and sea forced him to keep on across her bows.
She slowed her engines and swung to give him a lee. Cap'n Sproul swore under his breath, cursed aloud at his patient rowers, and told them to keep on. And when these astonishing tactics of a lonely dingy in a raging sea were observed from the bridge of the cutter, a red-nosed and profane man, who wore a faded blue cap with peak over one ear, gave orders to lower away a sponson boat, and came himself as coxswain, as though unwilling to defer the time of reckoning with such recalcitrants.
"What in billy-be-doosen and thunderation do you mean, you weevil-chawers, by not coming alongside when signalled—and us with a dozen wrecks to chase 'longshore?" he demanded, laying officious hand on the tossing gunwale of the dingy.
"We're attendin' strictly to our own business, and the United States Govvument better take pattern and go along and mind its own," retorted Cap'n Sproul, with so little of the spirit of gratitude that a shipwrecked mariner ought to display that the cutter officer glared at him with deep suspicion.
"What were you mixed up in—mutiny or barratry?" he growled. "We'll find out later. Get in here!"
"This suits me!" said Cap'n Sproul, stubbornly.
The next moment he and his Portuguese were yanked over the side of the boat into the life-craft—a dozen sturdy chaps assisting the transfer.
"Let the peapod go afloat," directed the gruff officer. "It's off the Polyhymnia—name on the stern-sheets—evidence enough—notice, men!"
"I'm not off the Polyhymnia," protested Cap'n Sproul, indignantly. "I was goin' along 'tendin' to my own business, and you can't—"