Jim grasped the spokes firmly, as much for the purpose of steadying himself against the vessel's furious plunging as to hold her before the wind, and after draining the pan of its bitter contents Bob Brace went into the cabin.
Owing to the violent motion of the brig the boys in the galley made no effort to join the young fisherman at the helm, and he was left alone during half an hour, when Bob returned.
"Did you find the charts?" Jim asked eagerly.
"Yes; an' I reckon there's no call to worry ourselves very much. We're runnin' pretty nigh south, an' if the brig was a hundred miles off the coast when I came aboard there's nothin' between us an' the Bahamas. We've got thirteen or fourteen hundred miles of clear water, an' this breeze will blow itself out before——"
"Look! Look there!" Jim cried excitedly, heaving the wheel down to port as rapidly as he could handle the spokes.
Bob turned quickly, and but one brief glance was sufficient to cause him to spring to the helmsman's aid.
There was good reason why the two were alarmed. Directly in the Bonita's course, less than half a cable's length away, a huge fabric of canvas and cordage came out of the gloom like a phantom, as if bent on running down the brig.
The stranger had all lowersails set, and a collision would have been fatal to the smaller craft because her headway was so much less than that of the other.
"Up with the helm, lad, to meet her as she comes around!" Bob screamed, when the wheel had been jammed hard down for a second, and the Bonita heeled over while responding to the rudder's sudden swing. "We shall clear her, but it'll be a rub."
The stranger had also changed her course by this time, and as the two vessels swept past each other on a heaving, screaming sea of foam, hardly twenty feet apart, Jim sprang toward the flare.