“It will blow harder,” said Trevor to Billy as they stood under shelter of the weather bulwarks holding on to the shrouds. “Does it never come into your mind to think where we would all go to if the Evening Star went down?”
“No, Luke. I can’t say as it does. Somehow I never think of father’s smack goin’ down.”
“And yet,” returned Luke in a meditative tone, “it may happen, you know, any night. It’s not six months since the Raven went down, with all hands, though she was as tight a craft as any in the fleet, and her captain was a first-rate seaman, besides bein’ steady.”
“Ay, but then, you see,” said Billy, “she was took by three heavy seas one arter the other, and no vessel, you know, could stand that.”
“No, not even the Evening Star if she was took that fashion, an’ we never know when it’s goin’ to happen. I suspect, Billy, that the psalm-singers, as Gunter calls ’em, has the best of it. They work as well as any men in the fleet—sometimes I think better—an’ then they’re always in such a jolly state o’ mind! If good luck comes, they praise God for it, an’ if bad luck comes they praise God that it’s no worse. Whatever turns up they appear to be in a thankful state o’ mind, and that seems to me a deal better than growlin’, swearin’, and grumblin’, as so many of us do at what we can’t change. What d’ee think, Billy?”
“Well, to tell ’ee the truth, Luke, I don’t think about it at all—anyhow, I’ve never thought about it till to-night.”
“But it’s worth thinkin’ about, Billy?”
“That’s true,” returned the boy, who was of a naturally straightforward disposition, and never feared to express his opinions freely.
Just then a sea rose on the weather quarter, threatening, apparently, to fall inboard. So many waves had done the same thing before, that no one seemed to regard it much; but the experienced eye of the skipper noticed a difference, and he had barely time to give a warning shout when the wave rushed over the side like a mighty river, and swept the deck from stem to stern. Many loose articles were swept away and lost, and the boat which lay on the deck alongside of the mast, had a narrow escape. Billy and his friend Luke, being well under the lee of the bulwarks, escaped the full force of the deluge, but Ned Spivin, who steered, was all but torn from his position, though he clung with all his strength to the tiller and the rope that held it fast. The skipper was under the partial shelter of the mizzenmast, and clung to the belaying-pins. John Gunter was the only one who came to grief. He was dashed with great violence to leeward, but held on to the shrouds for his life. The mate was below at the moment and so was Zulu, whose howl coming from the cabin, coupled with a hiss of water in the fire, told that he had suffered from the shock.
The immense body of water that filled the main-sail threw the vessel for a short time nearly on her beam-ends—a position that may be better understood when we say that it converts one of the sides of the vessel into the floor, the other side into the ceiling, and the floor and deck respectively into upright walls!