“Pull away yourself!” said Hutton sulkily. “I’ve had enough of it. You brought us here, you’d better take us back!”
Hall’s face at that moment was a study. I fancy if this had been a ship and he the skipper, he would not have hesitated an instant how to deal with this unexpected contingency. But now he did hesitate. It was bitter enough punishment to him to be there exposed to all the dangers of a sudden storm, with the safety, and perhaps the life, not only of himself, but of us whom he had induced to accompany him, on his hands; but to have one of those comrades turn against him in the moment of peril was more than he had looked for.
“I’ll take an oar,” said Charlie, before there was time to say anything.
“No,” said Hall, starting up; “take the helm, Charlie. And you,” added he, to Hutton, “give me your oar and get up into the bows.”
The voice in which this was spoken, and the look of scorn which accompanied it, fairly cowed Hutton, who got up like a lamb and crawled into the bows, leaving Hall and me to row.
“Keep her straight to the waves, whatever you do! it’s all up if she gets broadside on!” said the former to Charlie.
And so for another half-hour we laboured in silence; then almost suddenly the daylight faded, and darkness fell over the bay.
I rowed on doggedly in a half-dream. Stories of shipwrecks and castaways crowded in on my mind; I found myself wondering how and when this struggle would end. Then my mind flew back to Parkhurst, and I tried to imagine what they must think there of our absence. Had they missed us yet? Should I ever be back in the familiar house, or—but I dared not think of that. Then I tried to pray, and the sins of my boyhood came up before my mind as I did so in terrible array, so that I vowed, if but my life might be spared, I would begin a new and better life from that time forward. Then, by a strange impulse, my eyes rested on Charlie, as he sat there quietly holding the tiller in his hands and gazing out ahead into the darkness. What was it that filled me with foreboding and terror as I looked at the boy? The scene of the morning recurred to my mind, and my halfhearted effort to prevent him from accompanying us. Selfish wretch that I had been! what would I not now give to have been resolute then? If anything were to happen to Charlie, how could I ever forgive myself?
“I think we’ve made some way,” he cried out cheerily. “Not much,” said Hall gloomily; “that light there is just under Shargle Head.”
“Had we better keep on as we are?” I asked. “I don’t see what else is to be done. If we let her go before the wind, we shall get right on to the rocks.”