“Joe Bett’s P’int!” exclaimed the skipper.
Dead ahead, and high in the air, a mass of rock loomed through the mist. The skipper had recognized it in a flash. He ran aft and took the wheel. The Heavenly Rest sheered off and ran to sea.
“We’ll run in t’ Hollow Harbour,” said the skipper.
“Has you ever been there?” said the man who had surrendered the wheel.
“Noa, b’y,” the skipper answered, “but I’ll get there, whatever.”
The nose of the Heavenly Rest was turned shoreward. Sang the skipper, humming it to himself in a rasping sing-song:
“When Joe Bett’s P’int you is abreast,
Dane’s Rock bears due west.
West-nor’west you must steer,
’Til Brimstone Head do appear.
“The tickle’s narrow, not very wide;
The deepest water’s on the starboard side
When in the harbour you is shot,
Four fathoms you has got.”
The old song was chart enough for Skipper Zachariah. Three times the Heavenly Rest ran in and out. Then she sighted Dane’s Rock, which bore due west, true enough. West-nor’west was the course she followed, running blindly through the fog and heeling to the wind. Brimstone Head appeared in due time; and in due time the rocks of the tickle—that narrow entrance to the harbour—appeared in vague, forbidding form to port and starboard. The schooner ran to the starboard for the deeper water. Into the harbour she shot; and there they dropped anchor, caring not at all whether the water was four or forty fathoms, for it was deep enough. Through the night the gale tickled the topmasts, but the ship rode smoothly at her anchors, and Skipper Zachariah’s stentorian sleep was not disturbed by any sudden call to duty.
And the doctor of the Deep Sea Mission has had many a similar experience.