Daylight dawned upon a wild sea to the eastward. The reef roared in a deep thunder, but the heaviest sea was shut off from them. Streaming scud fled past above them with the gale, and the mastheads seemed to pierce a gray sky, which hurled itself to the northward at a terrific rate.
The sea that struck the Sayonara was short, and had a great velocity, but it was not high enough to make her plunge bows under. She rode it with short jerks and leaps, smashing into it and sending a storm of flying water as high as her crosstrees. This the wind hurled aft and away in a heavy shower.
She was holding to one hundred fathoms on one, and seventy fathoms upon her largest anchor, and as the sea was shallow where she lay, the taut chains stretched right out ahead, like two stiff bars of metal.
"How did it happen—what is it?" Dunn kept asking; but his skipper could give no response. All he knew was that she was filling fast, so fast that they could just keep her about even with the leak. It was three hours before it showed less than four feet of water below, and by that time the men were getting tired.
Smart told off the watches, and sent one below for a rest while the makeshift cook tried to get all hands some coffee. They were going to have plenty of work cut out for them, and they needed all the rest and refreshment they could get.
With only one watch at the pumps the water began to gain slowly upon them, and by noon it was as high as ever again. The yacht plunged heavily under this extra weight, and Smart gave her every link he had aboard, afterward putting heavy stoppers upon both cables to take the strain of the setback from the bitts.
He had done all he could, and now waited with anxious eye upon the glass, hoping for the shift which he knew must soon come. If he could hang on for another twelve hours, he felt certain he would ride the gale down safely; then—well, then it was up to Dunn to say whether to risk a run to Key West or beach her. Just now the sea was too heavy to think of going to leeward anywhere. She would go to pieces on the reef.
Smart crouched under the lee of the foremast, watching men and anchors alternately. Dunn joined him.
"The women are getting a bit nervous, Smart," said the owner. "There's no danger as long as she holds, is there?"
"Not a bit," was the short answer. He was thinking how much easier it would have been if Dunn had allowed him to make a good anchorage before the blow began.