The river now seemed alive with traffic, barges beating onwards, laden almost to the water’s edge—others running down—steam tugs and ocean steamers, blackening the air with smoke—all twining in and out, passing and repassing, in a bewildering maze.
Uncle Mark still grasped the tiller, and though he performed his task with skill, it was a difficult job. The bends of the river were innumerable; often the wind came dead ahead; the barge was an unwieldy sailer at all times, and now she was overloaded into the bargain. Once or twice Uncle Mark, miscalculating her power of ‘coming about,’ had brought her into danger, and had a narrow escape from collision. Then the river grew clearer and the wind came straight on the quarter. She scudded onward merrily, and the water all round her was white with foam.
‘Look out, Mark, look out!’ cried Uncle Luke presently, and Uncle Mark, stooping to look under the red mainsail, saw that a steam-tug was swiftly steaming down on their course.
‘She’s straight ahead. Ain’t ye goin’ to keep away?’ screamed Uncle Luke, for the whistling of the wind was deafening.
Mark noted the speed of the barge, then measured the distance between the two.
‘All right, mate,’ he shouted, ‘we’ll clear.’
The barge sped on, the tug advanced quickly, Uncle Mark watched, carelessly at first, then anxiously. The tug was woefully near; by swerving slightly from her course she could have passed by the barge’s stern—by keeping steadily on she seemed likely to cut it through the middle. Uncle Mark concluded that the tug would clear him; the tug calculated that the barge must ‘keep away;’ and she came straight on.
A collision seemed unavoidable, when Uncle Mark screamed:—
‘Haul in the main sheet!’ and, with a cry, he put down the helm.
He had jibbed her as the only chance of escape. The barge swept round before the shrieking wind with her bowsprit within a few inches of the tug’s side, quivering through and through as she heeled over, with a thunder crash, almost wrenching out the mast. Then there was a crash, like the bursting of a cannon, a great splash in the water—a shout from the tug.