The effects of the stormy weather soon became very apparent among the passengers in the pilot-boat—sickness laid its leaden grasp upon all the fresh-water sailors. Even Lyndsay, a hardy Islander, and used to boats and boating all his life, yielded passively to the attacks of the relentless fiend of the salt waters, with rigid features, and a face pale as the faces of the dead. He sat with his head bowed between his hands, as motionless as if he had suddenly been frozen into stone. Flora often lifted the cape of the cloak which partially concealed his face, to ascertain that he was still alive.
The anxiety she felt in endeavouring to protect her infant from the pouring rain, perhaps acted as an antidote to this distressing malady, for, though only just out of a sick bed, she did not feel the least qualmish.
Hannah, the servant, lay stretched at the bottom of the boat, her head supported by the ballast-bags, in a state too miserable to describe; while James Hawke, the lad who was to accompany them in their long voyage, had sunk into a state of happy unconsciousness, after having vainly wished, for the hundredth time, that he was safe on shore, scampering over the village green with his twelve brothers and sisters, and not tempting the angry main in an open boat, with the windows of heaven discharging waters enough upon his defenceless head to drown him—without speaking of the big waves that every moment burst into the boat, giving him a salt bath upon a gigantic scale.
After an hour’s hard rowing, the King William (for so their boat was called), cast anchor in the roadstead, distant about eight miles from the town, and lay to, waiting for the coming-up of the steamer.
Hours passed away,—the day wore slowly onward,—but still the vessel they expected did not appear. The storm, which had lulled till noon, increased in violence, until it blew “great guns,” to use the sailors’ nautical phraseology; and signs of uneasiness began to be manifested by the hardy crew of the pilot-boat.
“Some accident must have befallen the steamer,” said Palmer, the captain of the boat, to Craigie, a fine, handsome young seaman, as he handed him the bucket to bale the water from their vessel. “I don’t like this; I’ll be —— if I do! If the wind increases, and remains in the present quarter, a pretty kettle of fish it will make of us. We may be thankful if we escape with our lives.”
“Is there any danger?” demanded Flora eagerly, as she clasped her wet, cold baby closer to her breast. The child had been crying piteously for the last hour.
“Yes, Madam,” he replied respectfully; “we have been in considerable danger all day. The wind is increasing with the coming in of the tide; and I see no prospect of its clearing up. As the night comes on, do ye see, and if we do not fall in with the Soho, we shall have to haul up the anchor, and run before the gale; and, with all my knowledge of the coast, we may be driven ashore, and the boat swamped in the surf.”
Flora sighed, and wished herself safe at home, in her dear, snug, little parlour; the baby asleep in the cradle, and Lyndsay reading aloud to her as she worked, or playing on his flute.
The rain again burst down in torrents,—the thunder roared over their heads,—and the black, lurid sky, looked as if it contained a second deluge. Flora shivered with cold and exhaustion, and bent more closely over the child, to protect her as much as possible, by the exposure of her own person, from the drenching rain and spray.