They came and worked hard, but the waves constantly lopped in, and the amount of water diminished very slowly. He knew that if her stern swung round and she "broached to", the seas would fill the big stern-sheets completely, and as he could not trust to the engine-room bulkhead being watertight, she would probably sink. He understood then why Marchant had taken off his boots and oilskin.
He went back to the steering-wheel.
Just then the stokehold hatch opened, the stoker drew himself out, and scrambled cautiously aft. He began unlashing one of the two remaining barricoes of water, when a sudden lurch of the boat threw him off his feet, and he slid overboard.
Like lightning Marchant, shouting "Take the wheel, sir!" jumped in front of the protecting shield, flung himself down, gripping the wire round the engine-room casing with one hand, leant over the gunwale, and seized the stoker almost before he had fallen completely over the side. There was the crash of something being overturned, the sizzle of red-hot cinders falling in the water, and Marchant, with a jerk, wrenched the man against the boat's side. He gripped the life-line; Marchant gave a heave, and he climbed on board again. It all happened in the twinkling of an eye.
Marchant came back and took the wheel.
"Pretty quick work, that!" the Orphan said. "He'd have been drowned; we couldn't have turned round to pick him up."
"No; it wouldn't have been safe," Marchant shouted back, meeting a vicious swerve of the stern with a touch of helm.
"Look at my hands and face, sir," he said, when the picket-boat had quieted herself. "I knocked over that bogey; it hadn't gone out, and the cinders burnt me or scalded me when they fell into the water."
By the moonlight the Orphan saw that his face and hands were very red.
"I can't see that Lord Nelson's boat, sir," Marchant shouted in a minute or two. "She ought to have seen us turn and followed. I can't see her now."