A man of race and training, while in a crisis of this sort he feels more excitement than his thicker-skinned fellows, displays more outward coolness. Social development means the power of self-control, especially when any sense of responsibility is involved. Taberman was inwardly wild with the stirring emotions of an experience such as he not only had never encountered but of which he had heard in a hundred ways which lent associations to heighten the effect; yet he did not lose for a moment his sense of having the men to care for. He kept his head, and called the stroke for the rowers. They showed by their tendency to pull wildly how near they were to demoralization, and Jerry urged them to steadiness with language of the most picturesque emphasis.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Three shots. At the third there was a sharp rap, as if the cutter had been hit by a pebble, and a queer little squeak of splintering wood. Tab started up, but instantly sat down again, catching at the yoke-line he had half let fall.
"Close call," Wrenmarsh said nervously.
"Yes," Jerry answered laconically. "Stroke! Stroke! Steady!"
At the instant he had heard the sound of the ball on the wood of the boat, he had felt a sharp twinge in his left arm, as if the muscle had been suddenly tweaked off the bone by a pair of white-hot pincers. The pain was exquisite, but he forced himself to keep calm, and beyond the first involuntary spring he gave no indication that he had been hit. In a sort of double consciousness he kept saying to himself that he wondered how severe the hurt was, and at the same time he seemed to be lifted by sheer will and excitement above even the physical feeling of the moment.
"Steady!" he said, and was queerly conscious of a sort of exultation that his voice was so strong and natural. "We're 'most out of range."
Other shots followed, but they splashed harmlessly astern. The darkness was a shelter, and although the carbines flashed again and again from the shore, no more damage was done on board the cutter. Ahead of them Tab, holding himself together grimly, saw the red and green sailing-lights of the Merle, and realized that at the sound of the firing Gonzague must have run the yacht in shore.
"Ahoy!" Jerry called.
Tears of pain suffused his eyes in spite of him, and made the colored lights big and blurry, as if they were the glaring orbs of some huge dragon.
"Hollá!" came Gonzague's voice. "A'right, sair!" and with a deafening boom of canvas the schooner luffed up.