Nothing could be saved. There was barely time for all hands to tumble into the seine-boat and pull it to a safe distance from the fast-sinking vessel. Then they lay on their oars and watched her. She seemed like some live thing, aware of the fate about to overtake her, and struggling pitifully against it. The swash of the water in her cabin sounded like sobs, and the faces of the men who watched her, usually so bright and merry, were as sad as though they watched at the bedside of a dying friend.
The sun was setting red and angry in a mass of black clouds that came rolling up out of the west as she took the final plunge, and diving bows first, disappeared forever, leaving her crew silent, motionless, and awe-stricken at the catastrophe that had thus overtaken them.
The skipper was the first to break the silence, and in a tone of forced cheerfulness he said, “Well, boys, the old Curlew has gone where all good crafts go, sooner or later, and we must be thankful she hasn’t taken us along with her. I honestly believe we should all have shared her fate, and that of poor Rod Mason, if it had not been for this brave lad and the quick wit that taught him to do exactly the right thing at the right moment. I have not the slightest doubt that we owe our lives to Breeze McCloud, and right here I want to thank him, and to pay my respects to the memory of the brave man who brought him up to act as a true sailor should in such an emergency.”
These were grateful words to poor Breeze, who was feeling the loss of his shipmate, and of the schooner, more keenly than any of his companions, and fearing that perhaps they would blame him for what had happened. He had given Captain Coffin a hurried account of the disaster, and of how he had cut away the masts; but the skipper had found no time then to say what he thought of the course the boy had pursued.
Now, one by one, the men reached forward to shake hands with him, and had it not been for the thought of the drowned man, he would, in spite of their miserable situation, have felt as light-hearted as though already in port.
There were neither water nor provisions in the boat, they had no mast, sail, nor compass. Most of them were wet through, and already chilled to the bone by the cold wind, which was rising, and promised to freshen into a gale before midnight. Breeze was the only one who was dry and had his oil-skins on, and but for his hunger he would have been comparatively comfortable.
They stopped near the floating wreckage of spars and sails long enough to obtain the schooner’s main-topsail, and the foregaff which they hoped to rig up as a mast in the boat. They also cut away a small lot of the lighter cordage. Then they headed their craft to the westward, and started to pull for the distant land. The skipper said they were not more than fifty miles from the coast, and if the sea did not get too rough, they ought to make it by noon of the next day.
They were divided into two watches, and while half of them rowed, the rest huddled together as close as possible in the bottom of the boat for warmth.
It was nearly midnight, the wind was blowing a gale dead against them, and they seemed to be making no progress whatever. Breeze, unable to sleep, was sitting up gazing out into the blackness behind them. Suddenly, as the boat rose on the crest of a great wave, he sprang to his feet and cried, “A light! I see a light!”