“You and I, too, Haldane, ought to be on deck helping the skipper and the rest, instead of stopping here, hindering these smart fellows at their work. Come along with me, my lad!”
Leaving Mr Stokes at the door of the saloon in charge of Weston, the steward, the first mate and I proceeded along the waist to the bridge, where we found Captain Applegarth pacing up and down in his customary jerky, impatient way, like the Polar bear in the Zoological Gardens, as I always thought.
“Well,” he said to Mr Fosset, bringing himself up short in front of the rail on our approach, “how are matters getting on below—badly, I’m afraid?”
The first mate explained. Spokeshave, who was at the other end of the bridge, coming up to listen, as usual, to the conversation.
“That’s good news, indeed!” said the skipper on hearing how Stoddart had set to work to repair the damage. “I thought the engines were completely broken-down. If it weren’t for poor Jackson, who, O’Neil told me just now, was in a bad way, I think we’d got out of the scrape pretty well, for the old barquey is comfortable enough now, and, though there’s a heavy sea running and it is still blowing stiff from the north’ard and the west’ard, the sky is clearer than it was, and I fancy we’ve seen the worst of the gale, eh?”
“I’m sure I hope so, sir,” replied Mr Fosset, not committing himself to any definite expression of opinion in the matter. “It has given us a rare good doing all round while it was about it, at an rate!”
“Aye, it has that,” said the skipper. “The old barquey, though, has come through it better than any one would have supposed, with all that deadweight amidships, considering that she broached-to awhile ago and got caught in the trough of the sea the very moment the machinery below gave out. By George, Fosset, we had a narrow squeak then, I can tell you!”
“I can quite believe that, sir,” said the other, looking round about and aloft, sailor-like, as he spoke. “For my part I feared the worst, I’m sure. However, all’s well that ends well, and the old barquey looks first rate, as you say, sir, in spite of all she’s gone through. She rides like a cork.”
She certainly was a capital seaboat and lay-to now as easily as if she were at anchor in the Mersey, though the wind was whistling through the rigging and the ocean far and wide white with foam, bowing and scraping to the big waves that rolled in after her like an old dowager duchess in a ball room, curtseying to her partner.
During the long time the first mate and I had been down below in the stoke-hold, the skipper had lowered the upper yards and housed her top-masts, getting her also under snugger canvas, the fore and mizzen topsails being set “scandalised,” as we call it aboard ship, that is, with the heads of the sails hauled up, and their sheets flattened taut as boards, so as to expose as little surface as possible to the wind, only just sufficient to keep the vessel with her head to sea, like a stag at bay.