“Hooray!” exclaimed Bob. “We’re gaining on it.”
This inspired them with renewed strength; and, after nearly an hour’s hard work, they had so lessened the water that only a small portion now remained washing about under the bottom boards of the boat, which, recovering all her old buoyancy, floated again with a high freeboard, light as a cork, above the surface of the sea, instead of being level with it as before.
“That’s a good job done!” said Dick. “I wish that theer murderin’ shep hadn’t a-bruk our mast; fur, we’d soon been all right!”
“While you’re about it, Dick,” said Bob, “you might, just as well, wish she hadn’t carried the mast and boom away with her. I don’t believe they’ve left us anything!”
No, the colliding ship had made a “clean sweep” of all their spars and rigging and everything; hardly a rope’s-end remaining attached to the cutter, beyond a part of the mainsheet and a bit of the forestay, which latter was hanging down from the bowsprit, the only spar the yacht had left.
Not a single thing of all her deck-fittings, either, had the little vessel to the good; even her tiller had been wrenched off and the rudder smashed.
Nor were there any oars left in the little craft; though, even if there had been, the yacht was too heavy for boys like Bob and Dick to have made her move at the most infinitesimal rate of speed.
It is true, there was the old gaff-topsail still in the fore-peak, as well as a spare jib; but they had nothing to spread them out to the wind with, or affix them to.
They were, in fact, oar-less, sail-less, helpless!
“I don’t see what we can do,” said Bob, when they had looked over all the boat, in case something perchance might have escaped their notice. “We can only hope and pray!”