There was a sharp crack that the three heard clearly above the howling wind and snarling sea. Something had parted, some vital part had given way. The “Gazelle” sailed less surely, she staggered up the steep sea slopes more heavily. Anxiously the three boys looked forward, upward, all around to find the cause; they dared not stand up to investigate, they could only look and long for a lightning flash to reveal the damage.
“There, look!” Frank shouted, and rose half way to his feet, only to be dashed violently to the deck again.
A flash showed that the main gaff had broken in the middle, and was flapping heavily against the stout canvas of the mainsail.
The three boys stared at each other questioningly, though only an occasional flash of lightning revealed their faces. Each knew that something must be done—that unless the mainsail was lowered very soon it would be torn to tatters by the jagged ends of the broken gaff; or the broken spar banging around with the swaying of the yacht might injure some of the standing rigging and weaken the mainmast stays.
The tempest had not abated in the slightest, the wind still roared a gale, and the rain came down in a steady flood; the “sea rose mountains high.”
“Take the stick, Arthur.” Kenneth made a funnel of his hands and roared to the mate. He had conceived a plan to reach the halliards at the foot of the mast and lower the broken stick. Hazardous as the plan was, it must be done.
Kenneth tied a stout line around his body, and, taking a turn round a cleat close to the companion way, he gave the end to Frank.
“Pay out slowly, but be sure you keep a turn so that if I should go overboard you’d have me—see?” Kenneth shouted in his friend’s ear. The other answered that he understood, and grasped the skipper’s arm a second, a token of devotion and confidence that had a world of meaning in it.
Grasping the windward rail that ran round the roof of the cabin, Kenneth, flat on his face, began the perilous journey. It was scarcely fifteen feet, a mere step, but a journey to the North Pole could have hardly been more dangerous. Crawling, creeping, rolling, the boy painfully made his way along. Frequently he was drenched with water and had to hold on to the slender rail with might and main. The wind beat the rain in his face; the motion of the yacht wrenched at his hands as if trying to make him let go; the broken gaff slatted and slapped over his head, threatening to fall and knock him senseless. At length the plucky boy reached the mast, and shouting to Frank to let go the line, lashed himself securely to it. Arthur brought the boat up into the wind for a moment, though there was imminent danger of being swamped, while Kenneth let go the halliards and the mainsail came down with a run. Frank sheeted home the lowered boom, making it solid in its fore and aft position. Then came the hardest part of all—furling the mainsail. How it was done Kenneth could scarcely tell. He came within an ace of being dashed overboard twenty times; but he escaped at last to reach the cockpit, safe but utterly exhausted. “The Gazelle,” under head sails and jigger only, rode out the gale. Dawn showed the storm-worn boys the entrance to a safe harbor, into which they thankfully crept, and for half the day they slept the deep, dreamless sleep of utter weariness.
Six days later the “Gazelle” sailed into the harbor of Savannah, Kenneth having repaired the gaff in the meantime. She had little of the look of a boat that had passed through a storm which would have been serious for a vessel five times her size. Her crew, however, showed the effect of the battle with the elements; their white working suits were decidedly dingy, and the white rubber-soled shoes they wore were sorely in need of pipe-clay.