“Now, mind ye kape a good watch,” said the first mate, as he left them to their own devices, “and out if you say a single hincoop floating in the say foreninst ye—though it’s little enough of them you’ll say, sure, considerin’ they were all washed overboard off the Cape!—I mane if ye say any timbers or spars from the wrack drifting inshore, just you hould your eye on thim, or the divil a mother’s son ye’ll have a roof over his hid or a pace of foire to warm his-self! Faix, ye needn’t snigger, ye spalpeens; it’s the truth I’m afther tellin’ ye!” and Mr McCarthy then went off, shaking his fist good-humouredly at those who laughed at his quaint speech.
Four other men he selected as a crew for the jolly-boat, which was hauled down on the beach in readiness to shove off as soon as any of the wreckage was reported in sight; the remainder of the hands being directed to place themselves under the orders of the carpenter until their services should be required to relieve the look-out men at the end of their watch. The duty of these latter, however, was for some time a sinecure, as the breakers were still breaking angrily against the cliffs and keeping up the hoarse diapason in which they expressed their impotent rage; while the wind, though blowing with less force than during the night time, was yet strong enough to sweep off the tops of the billows when it caught them well abeam, carrying the spindrift away to leeward and scattering the surge with its blast as it transformed it into fairy-like foam bubbles and wreaths of gossamer spray.
Noon came before there was any change.
Then, soon after the end of the ebb and just as the tide began to flow again, the wind died away into a dead calm; and the sea settling down somewhat—the rollers still rolling in, but only breaking when they reached the shore, instead of jostling one another in their tumultuous rushings together and mimic encounters out in the open—every eye was on the qui vive. It was either “now or never” that they might expect anything coming inshore from the wreck!
“Sail ho!” at length shouted one of the look-out men on the ridge. The sailor evidently could not help using the nautical term from old habit, although he well knew that there was little chance of his seeing a “sail” that quarter!
“Where away?” called out Mr McCarthy, who had the jolly-boat’s crew round her, running her into the water the moment he heard the cry.
“Right to leeward of the reef, sir, about a mile out,” answered the look-out, adding quickly afterwards, “it looks a pretty biggish bit of timber, sir, and rides high in the water.”
“All right, my man,” said the mate; “mind you kape still on the watch, and fix any other paces of planking you may say in your mind’s eye! You can till me where to look for thim whin I come back agin within hail. Shove off, you beggars!” he then cried out to the boat’s crew, as he jumped in over the side. “Arrah put your backs into it, for we’re bound to save ivery scrap of the ould vessel we can come across, in order sure to tow it ashore!”
Watching for an opportunity, the boat’s head was shoved out on top of a return wave, when, the oars being plied with sturdy strokes, the little buoyant craft was soon well out of the broken water and making steady progress in the direction that had been pointed out. No object, however, could be seen as yet by Mr McCarthy; for the rollers were still so high that when the boat was sunk in the hollow between them nothing could be noticed beyond the curving ridge of the next wave and the broken wash of the one just overtopped.
“Go it, boys, kape at it with a will,” cried the mate, rising up in the stern-sheets after a while to look round better, steadying himself by holding on to the yoke-lines and leaning forwards. “Ha! I can say it now, right in front! We’ll soon have it—one more stroke, and we’ll be there, sure!”