Suddenly the captain remembered the broken skylights. He splashed out of the cockpit, where he stood almost waist-deep in the jumping water, steadied himself by the combings, and started forward.
"Pumps!" he shouted. "Come!"
He waved his arm to the men, and the yellow-clad figures detached themselves in the mist and blurring rain from the points of vantage to which they had clung, and dumb, obedient, followed him.
The pumps were just abaft the foremast, and were of the semi-rotary sort. The bars were fitted, and two of the men, swinging themselves back and forth, back and forth, with a dull and dreary monotony, began pumping as if they had become parts of a machine. A steady flow of water came from the waste-pipe in a continuous stream. It spread out over the deck to port and to starboard as the yacht swayed. It was full of bubbles and flecks of froth, and was a sickly yellow in hue.
Jack set the rest of the men to stretch new tarpaulins over the gaping skylights, and then he went below to look at the glass. Drenched, bruised, cold from his long fight with the storm and the hours which had gone by without his having had food, he found himself, now that for the moment action was not imperative, seized with a sort of terror at the perils he had gone through. The instant reflection that worse might be yet to come restored his courage. He could face whatever might befall as long as he might act.
The sight which met him in the once trig cabin was sufficiently dispiriting. A thin sheet of water swashed softly about over the Turkish carpet. It chuckled in dark places as if sentient and fully aware of the impropriety of its being there. A locker door had burst open, and was banging maddeningly. Farther forward, in the dark staterooms, similar noises could be heard, with sounds which suggested that all sorts of small things were being flung about. Everything was sopped with sea-water and drenched by the beating rain: the transom-cushions, two of which were skating about the cabin with the wicker deck-chairs; the books on their shelves; the lockers, the mirrors, the sheathing, down which large drops ran in dizzying zigzags,—in short, everything. The sight gave Jack a feeling of discouragement worse than anything on deck—even the tearing away of the bulwarks—had been able to produce. He felt as if the cruel old ocean were mouthing the schooner as a beast breaks the bones of its prey before devouring it. He drew in his breath with fierce resolution, all his combative spirit aroused to fight to the last gasp, and made his stumbling way to the barometer. He steadied it with his hand, and read it. It stood at 27.04. This was a drop of only .05 since his last observation, and the captain's face cleared a little. If the glass had practically stopped falling, as apparently it had, the hardest part of the gale would come soon, and be speedily over. The old weather saw came into his head,—
Long foretold, long last;
Short notice, soon past.
The relief, slight as it was, affected him so strongly that he almost smiled. He reflected that the Merle was as well prepared to meet it as under the circumstances she could be, and he had no real doubt of her ability to ride it out, unless some unexpected accident disabled the "sea-anchor."
When he came on deck he was greeted by Tab, who had taken charge in his absence, and who asked eagerly the state of the glass. Jack told him, and drawing him into the companionway, where they could escape the wind enough to talk, he added his reasons for thinking that a short time might see them through the worst.