A wall of storm-beaten rock disclosed itself to starboard. Again almost instinctively Kenneth attempted to put the wheel hard over—this time to starboard.
The wheel resisted his efforts to turn it. He wrenched at it, putting his whole weight into the attempt, but in vain.
Once more the wheel had jammed!
Even in the midst of peril Raxworthy found himself wishing that the commander were on board just to convince him that the gear was defective. It was solely owing to the Bloke’s pig-headedness that the picket-boat was in this desperate plight and that, instead of enjoying his Christmas leave, the victim of the commander’s undeserved displeasure was now face to face with death.
Again the boat was broadside-on. Apparently the strain had caused the sternfast to part, and the ash-bucket was no longer acting as a sort of brake. It was now keeping company with the lost anchor and cable on the bed of Junk Harbour.
In the circumstances the boat ought by this time to be pounding upon the rocks; but to the astonishment of the midshipman and crew, she was scudding rapidly through a sort of channel between lofty and almost perpendicular walls of rock.
Momentarily the crested breakers decreased in height until the picket-boat was rising and falling on a succession of sullen waves. The wind, too, had eased down owing to a bend in the channel bringing one side of the cliff wall to wind’ard.
Kenneth could hardly realize this huge slice of luck. It was a thousand to one chance, and the boat had happened upon the one and only hope of salvation.
She had been swept by wind and a strong flood tide through a passage—little wider than her own length—into a comparatively sheltered haven in one of the islands comprising the dreaded Mutches.