'Where?' roared the other.
'To Sydney, New South Vales!' shouted Jacob.
The man, who was probably the captain, put his finger against his nose and wagged his head; but further speech was no longer possible.
'He don't believe us!' roared Jacob to his mate, and forthwith fell to making twenty extravagant gestures towards the ship in notification of his sincerity.
The wonderful squareness of the ship's canvas stole out as she gave us her stern, with the foam of her wake rushing from under the counter like to the dazzling backwash of a huge paddle-wheel, and she seemed to fill the south-west heaven with her cloths, so high and broad did those complicated pinions, soaring to the trucks, look to us from the low seat of the bounding and sputtering lugger.
'Lord now!' cried Jacob, 'if she'd only give us the end of a tow-rope!'
'Yes,' said I, gazing with admiration at the beautiful figure of the ship rapidly forging ahead, and already diminishing into an exquisite daintiness and delicacy of shape and tint, 'you would not, in that case, have to talk of five and six months to Australia.'
At a quarter before twelve she was the merest toy ahead—just a glance of mother-of-pearl upon the horizon; but by this hour it was blowing a strong breeze of wind, and when Abraham came out of the forepeak he called to Jacob, and between them they eased up the fore-halliards and hooked the sheet to the second staken—in other words, to a sort of cringle or loop, of which there were four; then, having knotted the reef points, Abraham came aft to seek for the sun.
My humour was not a little pensive, for the sea that was now running was a verification of the boatman's words to me, and I could not keep my thoughts away from what must have happened to Helga and me had we not been mercifully taken off the raft. The lugger rose buoyantly to each flickering, seething head; but, in spite of my lifeboat experiences, I could not help watching with a certain anxiety the headlong rush of foam to her counter, nor could I feel the wild, ball-like toss the strong Atlantic surge would give to our eggshell of a boat, without misgiving as to the sort of weather she was likely to make should such another storm as had foundered the Anine come down upon the ocean. I was also vexed to the heart by the speed at which we were driving, and by the assurance—I was seafarer enough to understand—that in such a lump of a sea as was now running there would be a very small probability indeed of our being able to board, or even to get alongside of, a homeward-bounder, though twenty vessels, close-hauled for England, should travel past us in an hour. How far were we to be transported into this great ocean before the luck of the sea should put us in the way of returning home? These were considerations to greatly subdue my spirits; and there was also the horror that memory brought when I glanced at the rushing headlong waters and thought of the raft.
I looked at Helga: her eyes were slowly sweeping the horizon, and on their coming to mine the tender blue of them seemed to darken to a gentle smile. Whatever her heart might be thinking of, assuredly no trace of the misgivings which were worrying me were discernible in her. The shadow of the grief that had been upon her face during the morning had returned with the passing away of the life the noble picture of the ship had kindled in her; but there was nothing in it to weaken in her lineaments their characteristic expression of firmness and resolution and spirit. Her tremorless lips lay parted to the sweep of the wind; her admirable little figure yielded to the bounding, often violent, jerking motions of the lugger with the grace of a consummate horsewoman, who is one with the brave swift creature she rides; her short yellow hair trembled under the dark velvet-like skin of her turban-shaped hat, as though each gust raised a showering of gold-dust about her neck and cheeks.