The effect of the oil was little short of marvellous. Far to leeward the tumultuous seas subsided as if by magic, leaving a calm, fan-shaped belt of iridescent water bounded by a terrific turmoil of broken water.
Clad in oilskins, sou'wester, and rubber boots, Webb took his place by the side of the coxswain. For'ard everything had been battened down, while in the stern-sheets were a couple of coils of rope and a strongly-stropped empty water breaker.
"Easy ahead," ordered the Sub. Although every moment was precious, he was too good a seaman to attempt to drive his boat at full speed through the turmoil of foaming seas immediately beyond the belt of oil-quelled water. To have done so would have resulted in a severe strain upon the engines owing to the racing of the propeller as the boat's stern lifted clear of the waves, and quite possibly the cutter would have found herself in a far more dangerous predicament than the life-boat to whose assistance she was proceeding.
Soon the steamboat was in the thick of it. Solid waves swept her as far aft as the cabin top; clouds of vapour, caused by the cold water coming in sudden contact with the hot funnel-casing, enveloped the Sub and the coxswain in a blinding, scurrying pall of moisture. Only by holding on like grim death were the two able to save themselves from being thrown overboard by the erratic, almost vertical jerk of the boat's stern. At rapid intervals the helm had to be smartly ported in order to enable the steamboat to meet the hissing crested waves, which, had they hit the craft on her broadside, might easily have capsized her, or at least flooded her cockpit flush with the coamings.
Nobly the cutter struggled onwards. Every foot gained was the result of sheer hard work—a contest of the product of a mechanical age with the forces of nature. Gradually the distance between her and the Portchester Castle increased; she was making slow but sure headway against wind and waves.
"See anything of the boat?" asked Webb, bellowing into the coxswain's ear in order to make himself understood in the racket of pounding machinery and the roar of the elements.
"Not a sign, sir," replied the man. "Maybe she's in the trough of the sea when we're on top of a wave, and t'other way about. Anyways, we'll pick her up if she's still afloat."
For full half an hour the strenuous struggle continued, then the steamboat entered a comparatively calm belt of water. The respite was but temporary, for two hundred yards ahead began the broken water as the waves began to thunder on the flat shore.
"There she is, sir," shouted the coxswain, as the glistening white bows of the Sunderbund's life-boat were for a brief instant visible on the summit of a wave. "And lumme," he added under his breath, "they're about done in, I fancy. At all events it'll take some getting out of that jumble of surf."
The man was quite right in his surmise. The liner's boat was gradually and steadily losing ground. Despite the desperate and heroic efforts of her rowers—they had double- and treble-banked the oars that still remained serviceable—the physical strain was beginning to tell.