He was about to let go both throat and peak halyards, and so bring down the big mainsail also, when, with a bellow of rage and a marvellous disregard of his lameness, Captain Duff rushed forward and snatched the ropes from the lad's hands.
"You thundering blockhead!" he roared. "What d'ye mean by lowering a sail without orders? H'ist it again! H'ist it, d'ye hear?"
"But Bonny is overboard," cried Alaric.
"And you want to leave him to drown? Don't ye know that if he's alive he's drifted astarn by this time? Ef you had any sense you'd be out in the dinghy looking fur him."
Alaric knew that the dinghy was the small boat towing behind the sloop, for he had heard the young mate call it by that name, and now he needed no further hint as to his duty. He had pushed Bonny overboard, and he must save him if that might still be done. If not, he was careless of what happened to himself. Nothing could be worse than, or so bad as, to go through life with the knowledge that he had caused the death of a fellow-being—one, too, whom he had already come to regard as a dear friend.
Thus thinking, he ran aft, cast loose the painter of the dinghy, drew the boat to the sloop's stern, and dropping into it, drifted away in the darkness. He had never rowed a boat, nor even handled a pair of oars, but he had seen others do so, and imagined it was easy enough.
It is not often that a first lesson of this kind is taken alone, at midnight, amid the tossing waters of an open sea, and it could not have happened now but for our poor lad's pitiful ignorance of all forms of athletics, including those in which every boy should be instructed.
Without a thought for himself, nor even a comprehension of his own peril, Alaric fitted the oars that he found in the bottom of the boat to their rowlocks, and began to pull manfully in what he supposed was the proper direction. He pulled first with one oar and then with the other; then making a wild stroke with both oars that missed the water entirely, he tumbled over backwards. Recovering himself, he prepared more cautiously for a new effort, and this time, instead of beating the air, thrust his oars almost straight down in the water. Then one entered it, while the other, missing it by a foot or so, flew back and struck him a violent blow.
Up to this time the lad had kept up a constant shouting of "Bonny! Oh, Bonny!" or "Hello, Bonny!" but that blow bereft him of so much breath that for a minute he had none left with which to shout.
Now, too, for the first time, he gained a vague idea of his own perilous situation. There was nothing in sight and nothing to be heard save the ceaseless dashing of waters and a melancholy moaning of wind. The sky was so overcast that not even a star could extend to him a cheery ray of light. The boy's heart sank, and he made another attempt at a shout, as much to raise his own spirits as with any hope of being heard. Only a husky cry resulted, for his voice was choked, and he again strove to row, with the thought that any form of action would be better than idleness amid such surroundings.