The man at the wheel knew very well what was wanted, and he put his helm up, instead of putting it down, as he might have done without this injunction. As this change brought the brig before the wind, and Spike was in no hurry to luff up on the other tack, the Swash soon ran over a mile of the distance she had already made, putting her back that much on her way to the Neck. It is out of our power to say what the people of the different craft in sight thought of all this, but an opportunity soon offered of putting them on a wrong scent. A large coasting schooner, carrying every thing that would draw on a wind, came sweeping under the stern of the Swash, and hailed.
“Has any thing happened, on board that brig?” demanded her master.
“Man overboard,” answered Spike—“you havn’t seen his hat, have you?”
“No—no,” came back, just as the schooner, in her onward course, swept beyond the reach of the voice. Her people collected together, and one or two ran up the rigging a short distance, stretching their necks, on the lookout for the “poor fellow,” but they were soon called down to “’bout ship.” In less than five minutes, another vessel, a rakish coasting sloop, came within hail.
“Didn’t that brig strike the Pot Rock, in passing the Gate?” demanded her captain.
“Ay, ay!—and a devil of a rap she got, too.”
This satisfied him; there being nothing remarkable in a vessel’s acting strangely that had hit the Pot Rock, in passing Hell-Gate.
“I think we may get in our mainsail on the strength of this, Mr. Mulford,” said Spike. “There can be nothing oncommon in a craft’s shortening sail, that has a man overboard, and which has hit the Pot Rock. I wonder I never thought of all this before.”
“Here is a skiff trying to get alongside of us, Capt. Spike,” called out the boatswain.
“Skiff be d——d! I want no skiff here.”