“Let go the falls!” I shouted, above the howl of the gale.
The gig splashed into the seething water. In an instant I had cast loose the bow block.
“Clear!” cried Yoritomo from the stern.
“Cut!” I yelled.
The oil cask plunged from its severed sling as the gig swung swiftly down the receding wave to the leeward of the Nancy. I caught one glimpse of the gallant old whaler staggering up and swinging her stem around into the gale. A faint cheer came ringing down the wind. Then we were out from under her lee, in the full sweep of the gale.
Though I had always prided myself upon my skill in handling small craft, I must confess that the narrow gig would have swamped or turned turtle within the first minute had it not been for our drag and the breaker floats. Before we had swung around to the drag, a comber broke over us and filled our little cockleshell to the gunwales. As she came out of the smother, still afloat but heavy as a log, we fell to with our bailers like madmen. We now knew she could not sink, but without freeboard she would not ride head on to the cask, and the first wave that caught us broadside might roll us over.
Fortunately the oil oozing from the cask was already filming over the surface around us, so that high as we were flung up by the racing billows and low as we sagged into their troughs, no more crests broke upon us. The moment the boat rode easier, I sprang upon a thwart and gazed about for a parting glance of the Nancy Briggs. But the moon was already covered by a wisp of the scurrying stormrack. When its silvery rays again shone upon the wild sea, I fancied that I caught a glimpse of the whaler standing out towards the open ocean on the starboard tack.
The deep booming of surf on a rocky shore brought my gaze about, and as we topped the next wave I saw that we were abeam the high cliffs of Cape Sagami, at the western point of the entrance to the inner bay. I swung aft into the sternsheets, where Yoritomo crouched ankle-deep in the wash, still frantically bailing.
“Belay!” I shouted.
He dropped his bailer, and looked over the side at the surf-whitened shore in blank astonishment.