It turned out as Crump had predicted in the morning—still heavier weather for that afternoon and night. Just when Sam was demonstrating with a long pole that there was at least a foot less water in her hold, the wind and sea began to make. Crump offered to attempt to put fresh men aboard, but Sam waved him off. “No use, Skipper, runnin’ extra risk for the gang—you’d lose some of ’em. We’ll stick it out—we’ll make out some way.”
Throughout that night the men on the bark toiled terribly. Chop ice and man pumps it was, with not even time to crack a joke or indulge in occasional cheering reminiscence. There was not time during most of the night even to carry to the rail and throw to leeward the chopped ice. So they cut it into large blocks and piled them up two or three tiers high and there allowed them to stay until by and by, the bark heaving down sufficiently, away they went in a grand slide overboard. “Everybody sashay,” Sam would cry then, and waft them overboard with graceful arms. And yet, exhausting as was the ice-chopping, the pumping was even more so. It was so terribly monotonous to men accustomed to lively action. No variety to pumping water out of a ship’s hold; never a chance to put in a fancy stroke or shift hands, as in ice-chopping. Up and down—always that—up and down; and when a ship is making as fast as she is lightened, never an inch of encouragement from the sounding pole. Sam had to cut down the spells from an hour to half an hour, and finally to fifteen minutes, so terribly wearing did the grind become to the exhausted men.
Sam himself had no exuberant vitality after that second night; but the unobtrusive will was inflexible as ever, and he had ever an eye for those on the Buccaneer. “Skipper, ain’t she been strainin’ through the night?”
“A little bit, Sammie, a little bit.”
“More than a little, Skipper—there’s been too much pumpin’ aboard you, too, for a little strainin’. How many strokes?”
“Oh, maybe two thousand through the night.”
“I thought about that. And now let me tell you something, Skipper—that kind of work won’t do your vessel any partic’lar good. It’s a terrible strain. I know, I know—you can’t tell me a little vessel like the Buccaneer can be a rudder to a big logey rolling ship of this one’s size and not show signs of it. I misdoubt you’ll be able to hang on much longer.”
“Much longer? Let me tell you, boy, we’ll hang on till you or me goes under.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Why won’t we? Who’ll stop?”