Thirty-six hours previous Ralph Endicott had boarded the schooner bound for the fishing banks and had been obliged, because of the rising sea, to cast Gyp Pellet's catboat adrift. The Gullwing was scarcely seaworthy, anyway, and Ralph had already agreed on a price to pay the Peehawket boatman if the old tub were lost.
Captain Bob Pritchett of the Nelly G. would not have had his craft so far inshore with this rising gale, it is true, had he not received Ralph's telegram announcing the young man's delay, and that Ralph would be somewhere off the jaw of Cape Fisher awaiting the schooner's coming. Nevertheless, it was not Ralph's fault that the Nelly G. had got into serious trouble. He was not counted by the crew as a Jonah.
It was one of those happenings that even the best seamanship could not have avoided. Not long after nightfall, and while the Nelly G. was heading almost into the wind but making good sea-room, a big, gray wave rose up out of the unexpected quarter of due east and smashed down upon the stern of the schooner. Her waist was filled and everything was washed overboard that was not lashed or that did not cling by main force.
The blow carried away the rudder. And though there was a spare one in the Nelly G.'s hold, it could not be shipped in such a sea as this that held. The schooner was at once, and thereafter, at the mercy of the gale.
Captain Pritchett got over a drag, or sea-anchor, that kept the Nelly G.'s head to the wind for that night and the day that followed. Had the schooner run before the wind she would surely have brought up on the heel of Cape Cod. As it was, tide and gale forced her steadily, if slowly, inshore. All her company could hope for was a lull in the wind and for clearing weather.
There was no fruit of this hope, as has been seen. Toward evening another monster wave tore the drag free. The schooner's fate was then sure. Captain Pritchett could not make the narrow entrance to Lower Trillion Inlet. The mouth of Clinkerport Bay was too far to the north. The schooner could not claw around the Twin Rocks under such sail as could be spread.
The expected finally happened. It was not now far from one o'clock in the morning when the Nelly G. struck broadside upon the reef that lay just under the sea-level, and canted over to port.
The imperiled ship's company knew well enough that they could expect no help from the Lower Trillion life saving crew, even if all the members were on duty in this unseasonable gale. No oared boat could be pulled up the coast to the scene of the wreck. Between the ill-fated Nelly G. and the sands was a wide stretch of rock-strewn sea in which the tide boiled like water in a cauldron. This space was too wide for a line to be shot over it from the sands to the schooner.
Not all of the fishing craft's nests of dories had been carried away, but a boat could not live in that turmoil of the sea. The crew climbed the rigging and lashed each other to the stays, waiting for daylight and hoping only for the gale to cease.
A long-enduring storm such as this in winter would have spelled death for many of the company. But if the schooner did not break up at once they might all cling until the sea went down and some means then be found to rescue them.