A tedious and difficult job that; and dangerous, with big seas threatening to overpower the logey craft. But it had to be done; and it was done after a long and wracking night.
Sail on her again, the Skipper tried to beat her around the cape. But as a square-rigger won’t lay hove-to as snugly as a fore-and-after, neither will she hold up to the wind like a fore-and-after. A fore-and-after always for coasting work; a square-rigger for trade-winds and the wide ocean wherein to navigate.
The Fuller would not do it; nor could her master work her under the lee of the land. What with the water in her hold, the ice on her hull, and her insufficiency of sail, she only rolled and drifted in the trough of the sea. And having left both anchors in the harbor of Chatham, he could get no grip of bottom to hold her. However, he could do the next best thing—he could lay her to a drag. So getting several of the mahogany logs out of her hold, the crew lashed them together, and, working under protest, mutinous almost in their free discussion of things, they hoisted the drag up and dropped it over the rail after great exertion.
It was again night, and still no signs of a rescuing tug. Another private glance at the telegram revealed nothing new. “We’re altogether too near the shoals for Wiley,” muttered the captain of the Fuller, “and even if we weren’t, I guess he’s having all he wants to look after himself in this gale. I wonder is she drifting fast? The lead there, fellows—give her the lead, and see what’s under us.”
One man had life enough to take a sounding. “Forty-five fathom,” he called.
“Forty-five! God, but we’re going into it! Cut that drag adrift and let’s get out of here. Get together, men, and make sail of some kind till we’re by this place.”
“What place is it just, Captain?”
“It’s Georges North Shoal to looard of us.”
They asked no more, but worked with desperation. Frost-bitten, wet, hungry, they made sail of it in some fashion. Anywhere for them now but Georges North Shoal and sure death.
“And once by here, let her go where she will— I’m done with her,” announced the tired captain of the Henry Fuller.