The sails reset, he elbowed the fellow from the wheel, and took it himself just as the first fury descended upon us.
She was a noble vessel in a blow, as I could see, but she had lost some way, and had no time to recover. Expert at the wheel as he was, it was too much to expect of timber.
She quivered an instant to the first flaw, then followed the deadlier, heavier wind.
There was a minute of sharp list as cordage groaned. Then we shot back suddenly to an absolutely even keel, while a thumping started against the leeward planking.
Both masts had been carried away clean and true to the deck line![Pg 47]
CHAPTER XIII.
GENUINE NERVE.
There’s a sensation akin to pain in the midriff when a mast goes by the board. It is bad enough when actual stress of heavy weather brings that sickening, crunching crackle. But this thing was positive wantonness; this setting of extra canvas to a whipping “frother,” new canvas, at that, and without even the precaution of a single “preventer!” Old sails would have saved the sticks.
In that first instant of terror, the girl instinctively clutched me, and I held her fast a moment in my happiness before I assured her:
“There’s not a bit of danger! It’s just a mess, that’s all!”
And it certainly was a mess!