Courtesy of “The Youth’s Companion”
SHE WAS BEATING LABORIOUSLY INTO A VIOLENT HEAD WIND.
CHAPTER X
In Which the Cook Smells Smoke, and the “First Venture” In a Gale of Wind Off the Chunks, Comes Into Still Graver Peril, Which Billy Topsail Discovers
Skipper Bill o’ Burnt Bay got the First Venture under way at dawn of the next day. It was blowing a stiff breeze. A fine, fresh wind was romping fair to the northwest, where, far off, Ruddy Cove lay and Mrs. Skipper William waited.
“I ’low,” Skipper Bill mused, as the schooner slipped through the narrows, “that that there insurance wouldn’t o’ done much harm anyhow.”
There was an abrupt change of weather. It came without warning; and there was no hint of apology to the skipper of the First Venture. When the schooner was still to the s’uth’ard of the dangerous Chunks, but approaching them, she was beating laboriously into a violent and capricious head wind. Bill o’ Burnt Bay, giving heed to Sir Archibald’s injunction, kept her well off the group of barren islands. They were 98 mere rocks, scattered widely. Some of them showed their forbidding heads to passing craft; others were submerged, as though lying in wait. It would be well to sight them, he knew, that he might better lay his course; but he was bound that no lurking rock should “pick up” his ship.
“Somehow or other,” he thought, “I wisht I had took out that there insurance.”
At dusk it began to snow. What with this thick, blinding cloud driving past, shrouding the face of the sea, and what with the tumultuous waves breaking over her, and what with the roaring gale drowning her lee rail, the First Venture was having a rough time of it. Skipper Bill, with his hands on the wheel, had the very satisfactory impression, for which he is not to be blamed, that he was “a man.” But when, at last, the First Venture began to howl for mercy in no uncertain way, he did not hesitate to waive the wild joy of “driving” for the satisfaction of keeping his spars in the sockets.