“The old man saw it. It ware bright enough for all hands. So bright my heart gave one big jump an’ then seemed to stop. There ware the two women below, the girl—we tore along into the night with six men an’ one little black boy holdin’ on to anything they could an’ lookin’ out over the jib-boom end——”
Buck was silent for a moment. Then he went on.
“It had to come. I saw it first. Just a great white spout o’ foam in the blackness ahead. It ware the outer edge o’ the Diamond Shoal.”
Buck’s voice died away in the roar about us and close as I was to him I could hear nothing he said, though I saw his lips move. I went to the binnacle and peered into it. The lighthouse was drawing to the westward. The roar aloft was deepening as she swung herself to windward, but she was making good weather of it and holding on like grim death.
“How did you get through?” I asked, ducking down again behind the shelter.
“We didn’t. We didn’t get through. The Pocosin’s there yet—or what’s left of her. One more hour of fightin’ off under that reefed foresail an’ we’d have got to sea—we’d have gone clear. There waren’t nothin’ happened—just a smashing crash in the night. Man, ye couldn’t hear or see nothin’. Both masts gone with the first jolt, an’ up she broaches to a sea what was breakin’ clear out in seven fathoms. I tried to get aft—good God! I tried to get to the companion——”
Buck was looking steadily to leeward and the drift was trickling out of his eyes.
When he turned he smiled and his tired face looked years older as he wiped it with the cuff of his oilskin. The gale roared and snored overhead, but breaks in the flying scud told that the storm-center was working to the northward and the cold meant it would go to stay.
“I don’t know but what’s that’s so about a feller not goin’ till his time comes, Cap’n. I came in the next day on a bit o’ the mainmast, a little more dead than alive, but I’m tellin’ you fairly, Cap’n, if it waren’t fer you an’ your little ship, I’d just as soon have gone to leeward this mornin’. A feller gets sort o’ lonesome at times—especially when he’s got no ties——”
“Haven’t you any?” I asked cheerfully.