I stared at him with a passion of anxiety and dismay, but his cheery blue eyes steadfastly returned my gaze as though he would make me know that he spoke the truth—that matters were not worse than he represented them.
"Has the pump been worked?" I inquired.
He lifted his hand as I asked the question, and I heard the beat of the pump throbbing through the dull roar of the wind as though a man had seized the brake of it in response to my inquiry.
"This is a frightful situation to be in," said I, with a glance at Grace, who lay motionless, with her eyes shut, rendered almost insensible by the giddy and violent motion of the hull.
"It'll all come right, sir," he exclaimed; "daybreak 'll be here soon—" he looked up at the clock, "then we shall be able to see what to do."
"But what is to be done?"
"Plenty, sir. Tarn to first of all and secure the remains of the mast. There's height enough left. We must secure him, I says, then wait for this here breeze to blow himself out, and then make sail and get away home as fast as ever we can."
"But is the vessel, wrecked aloft as she is, going to outlive such weather as this?" I cried, talking in a half-dazed way out of the sort of swooning feeling which came and went in my head like a pulse with the wild, sky-high flights and the headlong falls of the little vessel.
"I hope she will, I'm sure, sir. She was built for the seas of the Dogger, and ought to be able to stand the likes of this."
"Does much water come aboard?"