"She'll do," he exclaimed, as he relieved Olive at the helm.
The girl nodded in reply. She was too breathless to speak. Her brief struggle with the strongly kicking tiller had required all the strength at her command. There was, she discovered, a vast difference between the long tiller of a well-balanced sailing dingy on the sheltered waters of the Hamoaze, and the short "stick" of a heavy ship's boat on the storm-tossed Indian Ocean.
Through the long hours till morning the boat ran before the storm. Never was day more welcome. At dawn the wind piped down and the sea moderated. The boat had made a fair amount of water, not only through the leaking patch, but over the gunwale, and, in order to keep the leak under, one of the lascars had to keep his hand down on the canvas stopper while the other plied the baler. This they had to do turn and turn about throughout the night, and by dawn they were both pretty well done up.
By nine o'clock, when the sun had gathered considerable strength, the wind had practically died away, and the sea had resumed a smooth aspect save for a long, regular swell. Only a few ragged wisps of canvas and the now almost idle and ridiculously inadequate trysail remained as a reminder of the night of peril.
In vain Mostyn looked for signs of land. Nothing was in sight save sea and sky. To make matters worse, the boat, which in that light breeze would have made about three knots under her mainsail, was now barely carrying steerage way. At that rate she might take weeks to fetch land—if she ever did so at all.
Breakfast over—it was a more substantial meal than their previous ones in the boat—Mostyn set the lascars to work to rig up jury canvas. The damaged mizzen-sail, that had served as a tent, was pressed into service, together with the tarpaulin. These were "bonnetted" together, bent to the gaff, and sent aloft as a square sail, with the result that the boat's speed increased perceptibly. Yet there was still a great difference between her normal rate and that under the jury canvas.
Smoking a cigarette after the meal, Peter let his thoughts run riot. He wondered what his parents were doing; whether they had had by this time any report of the West Barbican. If so, were they mourning him as dead?
"Rather rough luck on them," soliloquized the youthful optimist; "but won't they be surprised when I roll up again?"
Then his thoughts went to the Brocklington steel contract. He wondered whether the Kilba Protectorate officials had sent to Bulonga for the consignment. It seemed to him rather an idiotic thing to do, to have the stuff dumped down in that out-of-the-way hole, when the West Barbican might, with equal facility, have delivered it at Pangawani. Perhaps, after all, it was for the best. The stuff might have gone down in the ship, in which case Captain Mostyn would be a ruined man.
The mysterious loss of the West Barbican had been a source of frequent perplexity to Peter. He was thinking about it now, trying to put forward a satisfactory theory as to the cause of the explosion. As far as he was aware there were no explosives on board, a consignment of gelignite, for use on the Rand, having been landed at Durban.