In the afternoon, when the Resolute whistled that she was about to go ahead again on the hawser, the green billows were breaking over her bow and flooding aft in booming torrents. Her funnel was white with sea-salt from the spindrift as she plunged and reared like a bucking bronco. Dan was watching the laboring Resolute from the stranded steamer's bridge when Captain Bruce put a hand on his shoulder and said with hearty frankness:
"That skipper of yours is plucky, and he is a first-class seaman. But he will lose his vessel if he stays out here much longer."
"He may have to give you a wider berth by dark," said Dan. "In ordinary weather he could take the Resolute over the Reef along here, but now the seas would pick her up and drop her on the ledges. I guess he will have to leave me aboard here overnight, Captain. There's no getting a boat over to me now. And he can't take the Resolute to leeward of you, on the inside of the Reef, for there isn't a deep water passage through, for miles and miles."
"You are welcome to stay aboard with me, lad," replied Captain Bruce. "We may have a tough time of it ourselves before morning, and I fancy your uncle is sorry he did not take you off with him. But that can't be helped."
The Resolute had begun to pull. It was a thrilling battle to watch. The seas were so heavy that her power was applied in a series of tremendous lunges which threatened to snap the hawser every time her stern rose skyward. Dan held his breath and gripped the rail with both hands as the tug surged ahead again and again. Her mate and two deck-hands were crouched far aft, ready to cast loose the hawser whenever the captain dared to hold on no longer. After a while Dan saw the chief engineer waddle back to the overhang to take a look at the situation. There was something cheering in the sight of this bulky, stout-hearted veteran of many a desperate venture at sea. Bill McKnight plucked off his cap and waved it in greeting to Dan, as if signalling him that all was well.
"I guess he's clamped down his safety-valve long before this," said Dan aloud as he flourished an arm at Bill McKnight.
"My word but you are a desperate lot," observed Captain Bruce, and a smile lightened his anxious face and weary eyes. "I think we are safer aboard the Kenilworth."
He turned away to talk to his own chief engineer and his first officer. They had come up from below to report that the crew were beginning to talk of quitting the ship, and that it was hard to keep them at their stations. The news aroused Captain Bruce like a bugle-call to action. If he had been weak in an hour of temptation he was now once more the able, resolute ship-master, trained by long years at sea to face such a crisis as this.
"Do the cowards want to abandon ship while we are trying to work her off?" he thundered. "Look at that tug-boat out yonder. She isn't afraid to stay by us in a bit of a breeze. Come along with me. I'll handle them."