"I can't holler no more, sir," whispered Simpkins hoarsely, "my throat's give out."
And as the wind rose the three boats drifted apart. Four eminent scientific persons at the oars kept their boat head on to sea, and six other eminent persons lay on the bottom boards and wished they were dead, until the dawn crawled into the east and showed them that they were alone.
It was a chill and watery dawn, and as the boat topped the cold green waves on the edge of the Bank the prospect was eminently unkind. The wind was not heavy, but it blew hard enough to bring the spray of each curling wave inboard, and every one was soaked to the skin. The sky was lowering and overcast, and though the fog was dissipated, a mist covered the sun till it looked, as Simpkins remarked, about as warm as a new tin plate.
It must be said for Captain Joseph Prowse that he retained in some measure those characteristics of authority which he claimed for himself, and by a forced optimism, which the nature of his crew made him adopt, he endeavoured to cheer them up.
"My luck's temporary out," he declared, with some show of cheerfulness, "but it ain't the first time I've been run down, and with God's 'elp, gents, it won't be the last. And it's clean against the nature of things for so many learn'd men to come to grief at one fell blow. 'Ere or there a scientific josser may come to grief in a crowd, but so many bein' together is the best of insurances. I'll pull you through; you mind me. All I ask you to remember is that I'm captain, and what I says goes now and always."
"It's all very well," said the meteorologist, whose temper was going with the skin of his hands, "but we all thought you had no right to run so fast in a fog."
Captain Prowse gasped, and then recovered himself.
"Didn't I tell you I was captain here, same as on the steamer?"
"You did," said the sulky man of science.
"Then hold your jaw," said Captain Prowse; "when you, or the likes of you, is asked for criticism, it'll be time for you to give it. Till then you'll give your captain no lectures on the running of his vessel. God and the Queen's enemies 'as sunk my ship, but neither one nor the other has took away my natural gift of authority, so shut up!"