Lifting my wife to her feet, I examined him hurriedly, but found no cause for alarm. He was simply stunned by some falling object. "Let him lie where he is, and he'll come to directly," I said, and, leaving him to his mother, I joined the second mate to ask of Jim.
But a voice from the top of the house interrupted my query—a voice like the blast of a speaking-trumpet, strangely like Jack's. And there was Jim beside the mizzenmast, bareheaded and erect, his stoop-shoulders squared, his eyes staring straight before him into the horizontal rain and drift from the combers. "Ready about," he had said in that borrowed voice. "Hard alee!"
My wife screamed again, stood up, and stared at the figure on the house, and in a bound I had reached her.
"It's your boy Jim," I said in her ear, "but keep quiet. He's asleep." She knew what I meant, and stood still, staring with wide-open, hungry eyes at Jim, with an occasional downward glance at Jack.
"Get down off that house," sang out the second mate angrily.
"Let him alone," I shouted, "and do what he orders. Do you hear? Obey his orders to the letter. They will be correct."
I hardly knew this myself, but the second mate believed me. He motioned to the helmsman, who ground the wheel hard down. Forward, the forecastle men had let go the foretopmast staysail sheet, and this sail flapped furiously as the ship came slowly up to the wind. I hastened to the compass and looked. Though I could not have named the points, I could see that the wind was now blowing from the southwest, and that the ship had been heading nearly straight for that line of sand. I went back to my wife, and Jim turned his expressionless face and sleepy eyes toward the second mate, who had nervously followed me.
"Go forward," Jim commanded; "cockbill and stand by the lee anchor to let go at the word; then stand by with the carpenter to make fast the spring-line to the chain forward of the windlass, and to slip the chain at the first shackle abaft. And send two men aft to attend this line at the quarter-bitt."
"Aye, aye, sir," answered the astounded officer, hastening to obey.
Limerick was one of the men sent aft to the spring-line, and his amazement exceeded that of the other. "Goin' to clubhaul her," he said to me, "an' he don't know the compass, he's only a barber man an' no sailor. It beats my goin' to sea."