“Starboard a little,” came the quiet command.
Curley Crothers moved his wheel and the Puncher's bow yawed twenty feet, as if Providence had pushed her.
“Gawd A'mighty!” murmured Joe Byng, gazing open-mouthed at fifty feet of jagged rock that grinned up suddenly three waves away.
The pilot braced both feet against a stanchion and tried to take the weigh off her by pulling.
“Half speed, sah! Go slow, sah! Go dead slow, sah! You'll pile up you-ah damn ship, sah! Ah tell you, sah, you'll pile her up as suah as hell, sah! 'Bout a million sharks round he-ah, sah! For the love o' God, sah—Captain, sah—”
“Oh, muzzle him, some one!” ordered the commander, and the jiggling, complaining engines danced ahead, the horrid gray beneath the pilot's ebony notwithstanding.
“By the deep—four!” warned Joe Byng in a level sing-song. The two gongs clanged like an echo to him, and the Puncher's speed was reduced at once to her point, of minimum stability. She rolled and quivered like a living thing in fear, falling on and off, nosing out a passage on her own account apparently, and seeming to be gathering all her strength for one tremendous effort.
“That's bettah, sah! That's bettah, Captain, sah! Go astern! This he-ah's the bar, sah—damn bad place, the bar, sah! Go astern, sah. Captain, sah, d'you he-ah me—go astern! Try again, 'nother place further up, sah. Captain, sah! Over that way; that way thar—that way, sah!”
He pointed through the sky-flung spray with a trembling finger and his voice was rich with doleful emphasis, but the commander held his course and carried on. There seemed neither sympathy nor understanding on that unsteadiest of ships. Curley Crothers, solemn-faced as Nemesis and looking half as compassionate, moved his wheel a trifle. Joe Byng in the chains kept up his even sing-song, expressionless, as if he were an automatic clock that did not care, but must record the truth each time his dripping pendulum touched bottom.
“And a half—three!”