“I’ll give her a scrap of sail that she can carry,” exclaimed Arthur, and dived into the companionway, shutting the door quickly to keep the seas out. He returned in a moment, bringing a hand-saw. With this he severed clean the broken half of the boom, tying the ends of the rigging to the short stub that was left. This left the sail a huge, clumsy bag, that would evidently not hoist up but a foot or so on the mast, but might possibly be of some service in the emergency.
A torrent of rain now began to pour, falling so dense as almost to shut out the islands ahead. Their outlines became obscured, making the effort to run into the Thoroughfare a more difficult and dangerous one. Moreover, the wind continued to increase.
“Now, fellows,” said George Warren, as they came abreast of the end of Big Gull Island, “everybody up to windward and hold on hard. She’s going to lay over when she gets these seas broadside. Hoist the sail, Arthur, just as we begin to head in.”
Arthur sprang to the halyards, but they were tangled and did not pull true. Try as best he could, the sail would hoist but a little ways on the mast. It bagged out like a huge balloon, holding the wind and nearly capsizing them. Henry Burns, handling the main-sheet, let it run just in time to save them. Still the sail gave them headway, and, carefully managed, would answer to fetch them in.
Twice they had to head off fairly before the wind again, at the onrush of some enormous wave, but they got quickly on their course again, and, rolling frightfully, with the boys clinging far out to windward, the little yacht all at once felt the relief which the sheltering extremity of Gull Island afforded from the awful strain. Almost before they knew it, they were in smooth water once more, riding easily at the entrance to the Thoroughfare.
“Whew!” cried George Warren, as he dropped the tiller and shook his hands, which were numb and aching from the strain and the cold rain. “That was a ride for life that I don’t care to repeat again in a hurry. Didn’t the little Spray do well, though, eh, Arthur? She had a good excuse to founder if she hadn’t been staunch. If she was only a little larger she wouldn’t have minded this at all.”
“We did come flying across that bay and no mistake,” said Tom. “I thought we were going to founder twice or three times, though.”
“Looks as though we were stranded here for some days, that’s the worst of it,” said George Warren. “This storm has just begun, by the looks of it. It’s a lonesome hole, too, down in this reach. Nobody ever comes here, except a few fishermen in the fall and spring. The Thoroughfare is all right, but it doesn’t lead to any particular place in the course of vessels, so it isn’t a regular thoroughfare really, like those over to the eastward more. Now and then a yacht goes through, just for the sail, but one has got to know the channel very well, for it isn’t charted accurately,—at least, so Cap’n Sam says.”
“Well,” returned Arthur, “we are not making a race against time, so I don’t see as it matters much whether we stay here or some other part of the bay. We’ll just lie snug aboard here to-night, and then to-morrow we’ll get out and explore. There are some fishermen’s shanties around on the other side of some of those smaller islands, and we ought to be able to build up a fire in one of them and live there till the storm is over, so we won’t have to stay in this little cabin all the time.”
“I’ll be glad enough to go down there for awhile now,” said Henry Burns, “and get dry and warm. Come on, Bob, let’s you and me start some coffee and biscuit going. You do the cooking, because you know how, and I’ll look on. I’ll get the dishes out, anyway.”