"Well, here goes," he said, as with the rope in his hands he reached the edge of the opening and prepared to wriggle through. But the captain stopped him. The old seaman held out his right hand. Nat, perceiving what he meant, clasped it in a fervent grip.
"Got pless you," said the captain, with some emotion in his gruff tones. "You are a prave poy."
The next instant Nat was through the open port, the captain extinguishing the lantern as the lad vanished.
Nat was a good and an active climber, but to climb a rope in a "gym" is quite a different matter to ascending one when it is dangling loosely from the stern of a plunging schooner ploughing her way briskly over a heaving sea under a smart breeze.
As his body came on the cable Nat was swung about like the weight on a pendulum. Below him boiled the white wake of the "Nettie Nelsen." Mustering every ounce of his strength, he began to ascend the rope. But the task was the hardest he had ever tackled. Swung dizzily hither and thither through space, the boy's brain reeled and spun. But he stuck to it pluckily and by dint of sheer hard, gritty work he at length managed to clamber as high as the break of the stern, and attain the level of the stern cabin windows.
But as he reached it something happened which came very nearly terminating the night's adventure then and there. A sudden lurch of the schooner, coming as Nat reached for the solid, wooden stern works, flung him violently outward at the end of the rope. For one instant he impended dizzily above the gleaming white wake of the vessel. The next he was dashed with stunning violence toward the stern.
As he was swung inward with terrific velocity Nat, more by instinct than anything else, let go with one hand and held the released member out in front of him with the idea of breaking the impact of the blow against the "Nettie Nelsen's" stern.
But instead of striking solid wood, his fist, to his surprise, encountered something yielding—the shade of the open cabin port, in fact. Before Nat could quite realize what had occurred he heard a deafening crash within the cabin itself as some glass or chinaware, which had been standing in the open port, was knocked to the floor when his fist struck the shade.
At the same instant from within the cabin came an angry shout:
"What in the name of old Harry was that?"