“Give me your robe,” I said.
He slipped off the loose garment without demur, and crept forward to press it into my hand. We were now in water in which the boat could be safely allowed to drift without guidance. I flung the oars inboard and lashed the robe to one of them so as to make a small triangular sail. While I worked I gave Yoritomo his instructions. Soon the sail was ready. I handed it over to my friend, and with the second oar for rudder made my way aft to the sharp stern. A few strokes brought us around with the wind on our port quarter. Immediately Yoritomo stepped his oar mast through the socket in the forward thwart, and set sail.
Though so small, the little cotton triangle drew well, as I could tell by the ease with which the gig responded to her helm. Another proof was the quickness with which we ran out from under our sheltering highland into the full sweep of the gale and the high waves of the open bay. Scudding aslant the wind as nearly north as I could reckon our bearings from the drive of the rain torrents, we hurled along through the black night, utterly lost to all sense of time and distance.
After what may have been two hours, or possibly three, the rain slackened to a fine drizzle and the wind began to lull, blowing in fitful gusts and veering about in a way that left me only the run of the waves by which to shape my course. Soon after, to my surprise, the great rollers began to lessen in height, clear proof that we had come under the lee of a headland. Outwearied by the long struggle, I decided to try for the shelter which it seemed to offer. But before I could give the order to Yoritomo to shift sail, a roller broke aboard us, filling the gig to the gunwales.
“Unship and bail!” I yelled.
“Bailer gone!” he shouted, and he crawled aft with his robe sail wrapped about the oar.
A second roller broke over us. We were among breakers, either upon a bank or a shoaling beach. As I labored to hold the gig stern on to the waves, I cried out in anticipation of the coming shock: “Hold to your oar! Cut loose the bundles. Stand by to pass me mine.”
“Ready!” he called back.
The gig struck softly on a mud bottom, and was instantly smothered under a third breaker. But the impact drove her over the bank, and we found ourselves afloat in fairly calm water. An attempt to pole with my oar showed me that we were in water deeper than I could sound. A last puff of the expiring gale caught the boat and swung her about broadsides. Before I could bring her bows on again she struck bottom on another mud bank.
Through the lessening drizzle I could see the outline of a rising shore near at hand. The boat lifted in the low swell that rolled over the outer shoal, drove forward a few yards, and stuck fast. A downward thrust of my oar told me there was hard bottom a foot below the ooze.