“Let me have that hawser,” he said in a businesslike tone. “Only, Captain, if I start towing you, I want to finish the job.”
“Glad to have you,” replied Captain Jordan, who, though he did not say so, was by no means heartbroken at the idea of running up a bill against his employer, in the circumstances. For, like everybody else with whom Simon Barker had had any dealings, the captain of the Grace and Ella had been a victim of Barker’s meanness. Most of the gear on the schooner was little better than junk. To wring a new set of sails out of her owner was one of the hardest tasks in the world. It was just the same with halyards, spars, and everything else aboard that needed to be renewed from time to time after hard wear and tear. Captain Jordan was convinced that the loss of the two masts was due to Barker’s stinginess. Twelve months previously the skipper had pointed out a defect in the mainmast and suggested that it would be safer to have the spar replaced, but Barker would not hear of it. It was that mast which gave way first when the squall hit them, and the foremast, unable to bear the additional strain, followed suit. Barker, therefore, was only paying for his own niggardliness.
CHAPTER X
SALVAGE
The task which Jack had undertaken was not so formidable as it might have been, for everything was in his favor. The end of a manila hawser was cast to him. This he made fast to the quarter-bitts, and then he headed due east to clear the end of Greenport breakwater. When once she felt the strain of the hawser holding her back, the little Sea-Lark tugged and fretted like a greyhound puppy at its leash, for she had a dead weight of several hundred tons dragging at her heels. And for a few minutes that dead weight almost seemed to be anchored securely to the bottom of the ocean. But the steady pull of the sloop presently began to tell. The schooner moved sluggishly, reluctantly, but the main point was that she moved, and before long the Sea-Lark had enough way on to make a steady three knots an hour, for the wind could not have been blowing from a more satisfactory quarter.
Exciting moments came when a particularly strong gust swept down on the two craft. With her boom swung away out, to catch the full benefit of the wind, the Sea-Lark strained her slender mast now and again more than Jack cared to contemplate. There was no “give” to ease her, with that solid weight dragging astern. Sometimes, also, a following sea hit the sloop viciously, breaking over her quarter, half drenching the boy at her wheel, and pouring down into the cockpit. Once, after the sloop had been struck in this manner, Captain Jordan hailed the Sea-Lark from the deck of the schooner.
Putting his hand to his ear Jack turned to listen.
“I’ll send you a man to give a hand if you like,” the fisherman shouted down the wind.
Jack could not make his own voice heard in reply, but there was no mistaking the meaning of the wave of his arm, with which he signaled back.