He spun the wheel over as Humphreys hoisted the jib, and the sloop filled away, with her bowsprit pointing out toward the mouth of the harbor.
By the time the Agnes T. had cleared the point, Young Dan found that the wind had freshened considerably, and was now coming out of the northwest in such vigorous puffs that carrying the topsail was out of the question. Humphreys suggested turning in a reef, but Young Dan said he guessed that wasn’t necessary just yet. He asked Jim to take the wheel while he went below to put on his coat. When he had taken his place again, Humphreys dropped down into the cabin, lit the fire, and put the kettle on for tea.
Young Dan ate his evening meal as he sat at the wheel, and before it was finished the increasing force of the wind made steering with one hand and holding his teacup in the other a rather difficult business. When it was finished, and Humphreys had cleared away the dishes, he came up on deck and settled down in the lee of the deck house, with his coat collar turned up around his ears.
“Gee, Dannie, but it’s blowin’!” he commented. “And ain’t she a-travelin’, though? Do you want me to get out the lights?”
“Oh, never mind ’em,” replied Young Dan, with the sailor’s too common disregard of the use of side lights. “We can light ’em up when we get around the fort. Come and take the wheel, will you, Jim? I want to fix that jib. She’s slattin’ round there, and ain’t half drawin’.”
Jim uncoiled himself from his corner, in the lee of the house, and took the wheel as Young Dan went forward. They were off Coffin’s Beach by this time, and Jim could see the summer hotels lifting their huge bulks up against the dark-blue sky, studded with stars that twinkled with unusual brilliancy in the frosty night air.
As the sloop was running dead before the wind, the mainsail was doing all the work, and the jib was slatting to and fro, and not doing what the young skipper thought it should. That was how his passion for carrying sail showed itself, and that was the cause of the tragedy that followed.
Picking up the long oar lying along the rail, he took a turn of the sheet around it at the clew of the jib, and boomed the sail out to port, where it caught the full strength of the wind. As it bellied out, causing the sloop to fairly jump through the water, Young Dan watched it for a moment, and then called out to his companion:
“How’s that, Tim? Ain’t she a-pullin’?”
Before Humphreys could make a reply, he heard a crash, and the wheel was jerked out of his hands.