“Nonsense!” he told her brusquely. “You are on the Gar. You are safe. In an hour you will be in a new world.”
“With John Woolfolk?”
“I am John Woolfolk.”
“But he—you—left me.”
“I am here,” he insisted with a tightening of his heart. He rose, animated by an overwhelming necessity to get the ketch under way, to leave at once, for ever, the invisible shore of the bay. He gently folded her again in the blanket, but she resisted him. “I’d rather stay up,” she said with a sudden lucidity. “It’s nice here; I wanted to come before, but he wouldn’t let me.”
A glimmer of hope swept over him as he mounted swiftly to the deck. “Get up the anchors,” he called; “reef down the jigger and put on a handful of jib.”
There was no immediate response, and he peered over the obscured deck in search of Halvard. The man rose slowly from a sitting posture by the main boom. “Very good, sir,” he replied in a forced tone.
He disappeared forward, while Woolfolk, shutting the cabin door on the confusing illumination within, lighted the binnacle lamp, bent over the engine, swiftly making connections and adjustments, and cranked the wheel with a sharp, expert turn. The explosions settled into a dull, regular succession, and he coupled the propeller and slowly maneuvered the ketch up over the anchors, reducing the strain on the hawsers and allowing Halvard to get in the slack. He waited impatiently for the sailor’s cry of all clear, and demanded the cause of the delay.
“The bight slipped,” the other called in a muffled, angry voice. “One’s clear now,” he added. “Bring her up again.” The ketch forged ahead, but the wait was longer than before. “Caught,” Halvard’s voice drifted thinly aft; “coral ledge.” Woolfolk held the Gar stationary until the sailor cried weakly: “Anchor’s apeak.”
They moved inperceptibly through the dark, into the greater force of the wind beyond the point. The dull roar of the breaking surf ahead grew louder. Halvard should have had the jib up and been aft at the jigger, but he failed to appear. John Woolfolk wondered, in a mounting impatience, what was the matter with the man. Finally an obscure form passed him and hung over the housed sail, stripping its cover and removing the stops. The sudden thought of a disconcerting possibility banished Woolfolk’s annoyance. “Halvard,” he demanded, “did Nicholas knife you?”