"Yes," she cried.
"Are you hurt, my precious?"
"No, but my heart has stopped with fright. We shall be drowned. Oh, Herbert, the yacht is sinking!"
"Remain as you are, Grace. I shall return to you in a moment. Do not imagine that the yacht is sinking. I know by the buoyant feel of her movements that she is safe."
And thus hurriedly speaking I left her, satisfied that her shrieks had been produced by terror only; nor did I wish her to rise, lest the yacht should again suddenly heel to her first extravagantly dreadful angle, and throw her, and break a limb, or injure her more cruelly yet.
The companion hatch was closed. The feeling of being imprisoned raised such a feeling of consternation in me that I stood in the hatch as one paralysed, then terror set me pounding upon the cover with my fists, till you would have thought in a few moments I must have reduced it to splinters. After a little, during which I hammered with might and main, roaring out the name of Caudel, the cover was cautiously lifted to the height of a few inches, letting in a very yell of wind, such a shock and blast of it that I was forced, back off the ladder as though by a blow in the face, and in a breath the light went out.
"It's all right, Mr. Barclay," cried the voice of Caudel, hoarse and yet shrill too with the life and death cries he had been delivering. "A gale of wind's busted down upon us. We've got the yacht afore it whilst we clear away the wreckage. There's no call to be alarmed, sir. On my word and honour as a man there's no call, sir. I beg you not to come on deck yet—ye'll only be in the way. Trust to me, sir—it's all right, I say," and the hatch was closed again.
Wreckage! The word sounded as miserably in my ear as though it had been the shout of "Heaven have mercy upon us!" What had been wrecked? What had happened? Was the yacht stove? Had we lost our mast? I had heard no crash, no noise of splintering, no resounding thump as of a fall. I listened, struck another match, and then lighted the lamp afresh. I might know now that the Spitfire was dead before the wind, seething almost soundlessly through the foam of the storm-swept surface. She was going along with a steadiness that was startling when one thought of and listened to the weather; for her plunges were so long and buoyant as to be scarcely noticeable, whilst sea and swell being directly in her wake, her rolling was of the lightest. This scudding likewise took something of the weight out of the blast howling after us; the echo as of thunder penetrating to the cabin was, comparatively speaking, dulled; but I was sailor enough to know that we should be having a heavy sea anon, and that if the yacht was crippled aloft or injured below, then the merciful powers only knew how it was going to end with us.
These thoughts were in my mind as I lighted the lamp. I now knocked on Grace's door, and told her to rise and dress herself, and join me in the cabin.
"There is no danger," I shouted, "nothing but a passing capful of wind."