"It had been a stormy night." Page [51].
CHAPTER VI
A STORMY NIGHT RUN TO CAPE ARNAUTI
It had been a stormy night, though the gale had not been so severe as either of the two the Maud had before encountered on the Mediterranean. It did not come on to blow hard till about eight bells in the afternoon; and at five o'clock in the morning Captain Scott estimated that the little steamer ought to be off Cape Arnauti; but all the lights of the island were on the south side. He kept her well off shore, where there were neither rocks nor shoals. There was nothing less than twenty fathoms of water a couple of miles from the shore.
The gale had come from the south; and the course of the Maud was only a couple of points from taking it directly aft, so that she was running too nearly before it for the comfort of those on board of her. But she had a little slant, and a close-reefed foresail had been set in the first dog-watch, and she had carried it all night.
The only difficulty about the Maud was her size when it blew hard and there was a heavy sea. She was too small to be at all steady on great waves, though the larger they were the better weather she made of it. Her worst behavior was in a smart, choppy sea, when the waves were not long, but short and violent. But this was not the kind of a sea she had through the night.
In a heavy sea of any kind she made a good deal of fuss; and being only forty feet long it could not be otherwise. She pitched tremendously, and mixed in a considerable roll every time she rose and fell; and it was not an easy thing for even a sailor to get about on her deck. Life-lines had been extended wherever they were needed, and all the ship's company were used to the erratic ways of the diminutive craft. After all, she was larger than some of the vessels used by the early voyagers to America, some of whose craft were not even provided with decks.
When the Maud was prepared for heavy weather she was as tight as a drum; and while the heavy seas rolled the whole length of her, not a bucketful of them found its way below her deck. The only danger of taking in a dangerous sea was at the scuttle on the forecastle, which was the usual door of admission to the forecastle below, where the two engineers and the cook had their quarters.