“Where can I get a slicker?” Henry inquired.
“Ask Rollin. He will get you one.”
The captain pulled on his sou’wester, tied the strings under his chin, and mounted to the deck. Henry rang for Rollin and stated his wish. The attendant brought boots, hat, and slicker. Henry pulled on a sweater, buttoned his coat up tight, and pulled on the waterproofs.
The gust of wind that struck him as he came out of the companionway sent him reeling back against that structure. He could hardly catch his breath. The driving sheets of rain blinded him. He fought his way forward, and entered the radio shack. The chief electrician was copying down a message. It was an order for the Iroquois to go to the rescue of the Capitol City. But Henry knew that it was not needed. Already the Iroquois was prepared to get under way.
Henry took the message to the bridge and handed it to the commander. “Tell Sparks to wire that we are leaving Boston to help the Capitol City,” shouted the captain.
Henry carried the message to Mr. Sharp and watched him send it. Then he went back to the bridge. The rain beat on him as irresistibly as ever, but the weather-cloth offered surprising protection from the wind. A sailor slipped the hawsers over the posts on the pier. Other sailors drew in the hawsers and stowed them away. The captain pressed his signal-bell, and the Iroquois began to move astern. She backed out into the stream and then turned and headed for the sea, into the teeth of the driving storm.
The beating rain obscured the view. Fog made the shores almost indistinguishable, for in from the sea, blown on the breath of the icy blasts, came racing great clouds of murky white vapor that screened all they touched. The captain looked grim and inscrutable. His jaw was set hard. He stood by the wheelhouse, conning the ship. At half speed the Iroquois slowly nosed her way down the channel. Wiped from view was the beautiful scene that had so delighted Henry a few short hours before. Nothing could be seen but occasional glimpses of shore, the tumultuous, muddy water, and the driving curtains of fog.
One by one the captain made the proper turns in the tortuous channel. As the Iroquois stood farther and farther out toward the sea, the waters became ever more tumultuous, the winds roared more fiercely, and the fog shut in ever denser. Fathom by fathom the ship crept past one after another of the island defenses along the way, that served as breakwaters to the sea and broke the sweep of the winds. When at last the little ship turned eastward at George’s Island, and faced the storm with the last vestige of protection gone, she trembled and shook in the grasp of the roaring blasts.
A smother of foam was the sea. Waves rose and broke in incredible confusion. The waters were churned as by a giant hand. The racing winds whipped the crests from the combers and flung them forward in sheets of blinding spray. Fog drove onward in clouds, now completely hiding the sea, now lifting momentarily, to expose the wild waste of tossing waters. The fury of the storm was indescribable.
Mountain high indeed seemed the waves. Before the bow of the Iroquois they rose up, up, up, as high as the men on the bridge, then rushed savagely at the little boat, seemingly bent on her destruction. Down they crashed, and the nose of the cutter was buried in a smother of foaming water. Sometimes the crests swept completely over the bow, pouring over the forward deck in great floods that raced aft and went foaming out of the scuppers. Now Henry saw why the decks had been cleared of all movable objects. Indeed, as he watched the smashing combers crash over the bow, he feared that the big guns themselves would be torn from their foundations on the iron deck-plates and hurled aft against the wheelhouse. With blanched face he stood on the bridge, desperately gripping the rail, and peering with fascinated gaze at the snarling, hungry seas.