“Worse, and more of it,” he muttered, as some of the crew who had narrowly escaped being overwhelmed, set up a shout; “this will be bad news to give poor old Billy.”
CHAPTER IV.—THE DERELICT.
Two days later the hurricane had blown itself out. The storm-stressed crew were set to work putting things to rights and the yacht put on more of her normal appearance. But she had been sadly battered for all that. Two boats were stove in, ventilators smashed and stanchions bent and twisted by the fury of the waves.
The flat, oily sea that succeeded the wild turmoil of the hurricane, heaved gently without a ripple as Jack and Raynor, the latter recovered but still wearing a bandage round his head, stood looking over the rail into the glassy waters.
So transparent was the ocean that, under them, they could see great fish swimming about slowly and lazily, as if life held no hurry for them. Now and then a great shark glided by, nosing about the ship for scraps. His sharp, triangular dorsal fin stuck from his back like a blue steel knife cutting the surface and glistening like a thing of metal. About these great tigers of the deep, two smaller fish usually hovered. These were pilot fish, the strange sea-creatures that invariably accompany sharks, and are supposed by sailors to pilot them to their prey.
Then there were queer-looking “gonies,” with their flat heads winging their way above the water and every now and then dropping, with a scream and a splash, in a group of a dozen to fight furiously over some drifting morsel. After these tussles they appeared to “run” over the water to give their heavy, awkward bodies a good start upward. Then, having attained a certain height, down they would flop again, like weights shooting through the air, hitting the water with a heavy splash and sliding, with a white wake behind them, for some feet.
Schools of nautilus, too, gave them something to look at as the delicate little creatures, with their thin, membranous sails set, drifted by under the gentle breeze that hardly ruffled the water.
“Doesn’t look much as if this ocean could ever have kicked up the ructions it did, eh, Billy?” remarked Jack, after a long silence.
“It does not,” replied Raynor, with a rueful grin, “but I owe it this crack on the head.”