CHAPTER XXXII
Jeremy, stumbling on deck at eight bells, pulled his seaman's greatcoat up about his ears, for the breeze came cold. He worked his way forward along the high weather rail and took up his lookout station on the starboard bow.
Overhead the midnight sky burned bright with stars that seemed to flicker like candle-flames in the wind. A half-grown moon rode down the west and threw a faint radiance across the heaving seas. It was blowing harder now. The wind boomed loud in the taut stays and the rising waves broke smashingly over the bow at times, forcing the foremast hands to cling like monkeys to the rail and rigging.
Captain Job, with Tom to help him, stood grimly at the thrashing tiller and drove the sloop southwestward at a terrific gait. The sails had been single-reefed again during the mate's watch, but with the wind still freshening the staunch little craft was carrying an enormous amount of canvas. Job Howland was a sailor of the breed that was to reach its climax a hundred years later in the captains of the great Yankee clippers—men who broke sailing records and captured the world's trade because they dared to walk their tall ships, full-canvassed, past the heavy foreign merchantmen that rolled under triple reefs in half a gale of wind.
One by one the hours of the watch went by. Jeremy, drenched and shivering, but thrilling to the excitement of the chase, stuck to his post at the rail beside the long bow gun. His eyes were fixed constantly on the sea ahead and abeam, while his thoughts, racing on, followed the pirate schooner close.
How was Bob to be gotten off alive, he wondered, for he had come to believe that his chum was aboard the fleeing craft. If it came to a running fight, their cannonade might sink her, in which case the boy would be drowned along with his captors. And there were other things that could happen. Jeremy groaned aloud as he thought of the fate that Pharaoh Daggs had once so nearly meted out to him. He felt again the bite of the hemp at his wrists, and saw that pitiless gleam in the strange light eyes of the pirate. Would Daggs try to settle his long score against the boys by some unheard-of brutality?
A sudden hail cut in upon his thoughts. "Sail ho!" the lookout on the other side had cried.
"Where away?" came Job's deep shout.
"Three points on the port bow," answered the seaman, "an' not above a league off!"
Jeremy, straining his eyes into the night, made out the dim patch of sail ahead.