"Right-o," agreed Mostyn, preparing to go for'ard with Minalto to reduce canvas still further. "Go about at the end of each watch, I suppose?"
"Yes," agreed Alwyn, "unless, of course, it's blowing too hard for one hand to dip the sail. In that case it'll be all hands 'bout ship."
At about nine o'clock Burgoyne awoke and relieved the Wireless Officer at the helm. During a lull in the wind the manoeuvre of putting the boat on the port tack was a fairly simple one.
Left to himself the Third Officer steered by the wind, occasionally checking his course by means of his pocket compass. It was now pitch dark, not a star was visible. Very soon it began to rain—big drops that borne by the stiff breeze rattled with considerable force against the helmsman's face. Spray he could and did endure with equanimity; in fact he rather revelled in the salt-laden showers, but Burgoyne had the deep-sea man's rooted objection to rain.
Pulling the peak of his disreputable cap well down over the left side of his face and drawing a piece of painted canvas over his shoulders, Alwyn settled down to make the best of things.
His trick was almost done when it suddenly occurred to him that the seas were no longer regular; in fact the boat was entering a patch of confused water.
Thinking it was a sudden shift of wind that accounted for the nasty cross seas Burgoyne glanced at his compass. The wind had backed; a point, perhaps, not more; and that was not sufficient to justify the agitation of the water.
He glanced to leeward. Above the howling of the wind his ear caught the unmistakable sound of surf. Not only abeam but ahead a line of milky foam warned him of the peril that threatened. The boat, close-reefed, was driving to leeward, and was already within two hundred yards of one of those dangerous coral reefs with which certain parts of the Pacific Ocean are studded.
"All hands!" he shouted. "Stand by and 'bout ship."