"With this sea running?" replied Captain Jeremy at length. "You would never make head way. Trust me and wait."
The crew could scarce believe their ears. Was the Captain overcome by the strain of the last few days? His pensive attitude seemed incomprehensible.
Yet Captain Jeremy was outwardly cool and collected as, glass in hand, he followed the course of the disappearing Neptune.
She was now on the bar, tossing, pitching, and rolling in the heavy breakers, for already the sea outside was running high and breaking over the shoals in one continuous field of snow-flecked foam. Yet the errant brig held slowly and truly on her course 'twixt the shallows that threatened her at half a cable's length to starboard and larboard.
She stood out close hauled on the larboard tack, the wind being due north, till she reached the bend in the channel that ran parallel with the shore. Here, being smartly handled, she turned and ran dead before the wind, her hull being lost to view from our decks by the intervening reef.
Instantly there was a scramble aloft, Captain Jeremy and I, with nearly a dozen men, gaining the main top, while the shrouds were alive with the discomfited crew as they watched from their lofty point of vantage the rapidly receding brig.
I glanced at Captain Jeremy. In spite of his coolness, I fancy his anxiety increased as the Neptune ran before the wind.
"Sink me," I heard him mutter, "she's hauling to the wind!"
This was indeed the case, but even as she did so she struck the fatal reef. The next instant she broached to, the rollers making clean breaches over her hull, and almost immediately her masts went by the board.
Then I understood, though imperfectly. Captain Jeremy, by altering the position of the clump of trees, had created a false landmark, and the Neptune had fallen into the trap.