"All hands, ahoy! all hands, ahoy! tumble up and take in sail!"
Thick and fast the rain-drops were now pouring on the deck, gorging the foaming scuppers, rushing as they only do in the tropics; and rolling from side to side, as if she would dip her yard-arms in the mountain-like billows that ran towards her, the Amethyst, with her courses set and topsails nearly close-reefed, was ploughing before the wind through a black and midnight sea. Loud and repeated orders rang confusedly on the rising blast, together with the trampling of feet, the creaking of blocks, the bellowing of the wind through the strained rigging, where loose ropes were flying wildly about, and there were the roar, the wash, and fierce incessant gurgle of the sea as it burst over the bows and boiled away beneath the counter.
"Close-reef topsails!" cried Captain Talbot, while the storm deepened; and with others, Derval and Tom Titford, under Mr. Bitts, ascended, to do their part of this task, by the fore-rigging, often as they went embracing the shrouds with their legs and arms; and the ill-conditioned third mate was heard using terrible language as he urged them all up to the cross-trees and out upon the yard.
"Out you go to the starboard ear-ring, you wretched little biscuit-nibbler, and don't look as if you had joined the Shakers!" he exclaimed, administering a blow with his clenched hand to poor Tom Tit, who turned his little white face upbraidingly towards him, and then lay out manfully on one yard-arm as Derval did on the other, and aided by the strong hands of the seamen at the centre of the spar, got the heavy wet canvas tied hard and fast with the reef points.
Poor Tom "lay out" on the yard with a will, above the black and seething deep, with all his strength; but in the fury of the wind it began to fail him, or it might be that in the force of the gale he lost his presence of mind, and when the men began their descent he remained, with his hands convulsively clutching the yard, and his feet on the slippery foot-ropes or in the stirrups thereof.
"Now then, stupid! are you going to sleep there?" cried Paul Bitts from the crosstrees, "or must I rouse you with my colt, and make you dance the binnacle hornpipe when I get you on deck?"
"Mother—oh, Mother!" the boy was heard to shriek, his small voice sounding weirdly on the skirt of the howling blast, as he slipped from the yard-arm, and vanishing into the wrack and obscurity below, was seen no more!
Derval felt his blood grow cold; and as one in a dreadful dream, from which he must waken to find Tom Tit by his side, he made his way, he knew not how, but mechanically, to the deck, where the tragedy was reported to the Captain. But there was not a moment now, either for comment, explanation, or regret, for there came aft a terrible cry from the look-out man at the bowsprit.
"Breakers ahead! breakers on both bows!"
"In the name of heaven, how came breakers here!" exclaimed Captain Talbot, for a moment forgetting that for many hours past he had been unable to verify his whereabouts. Proceeding forward in haste, the Captain went out to the cap of the bowsprit. In peril he was a man whose nerves became as iron! Steadily he looked around him, but even his cheek blanched then, though none could perceive it.