I replaced the telescope.
‘Here comes the wind!’ I heard Mr. Cocker sing out.
‘Ladies,’ cried old Keeling, ‘let me beg of you to step below.’
Most of them complied, but a few lingered, staring with curiosity at the coming weather. I watched it with amazement, for never before had I seen a storm of wind coming down upon a ship in a sort of wall. One saw the line of it in a ridge of foam whose extremities were lost in the gloom on either hand. It was of a glass-like smoothness all in front of it, and not a breath of air was to be felt when the stormy hissing of it was loud in our ears as it came sweeping up, the clouds on high darting to right and left, and a paler faintness, as of increasing daylight, coming into the air along with it. The bull-like notes of Mr. Prance rang from the poop through the ship.
‘Stand by maintopsail halliards—foretopsail sheets—foretopmast staysail down-haul.’
The wind struck the brig. My eye was upon her, and she disappeared in the shrieking whirl of flying spume as you extinguish a reflection in a mirror by breathing upon the glass. A minute later it was upon us. It smote the Indiaman right abeam, and down she lay in a seething and hissing flatness of boiling waters, stooping yet and yet, till the line of the topgallant bulwark rail looked to be flush with the furious yeasty smother. There were two men at the helm holding the wheel jammed hard over. I swung to a belaying pin on the weather rail, and the poop deck went down from me to leeward at an angle that made one’s eyes reel in the head to look along it. There was a true hurricane note in the bellowing of the wind on high under the rush and disparting of the maddened clouds, and the first flash of it between our masts was as the passage of a score of locomotives racing by at express speed and shrieking as they went.
I was waiting to see what the ship meant to do, when the weather maintopsail sheet parted, though a treble-reefed sail, with a sound like another clap of thunder, and in a moment the canvas was flogging away from the yard in ribands, with Mr. Cocker shouting at the top of his voice, and a crowd of seamen tumbling and capsizing about the main deck to the officer’s orders to haul upon the clewlines. It was at that instant, amidst all this prodigious hallabaloo, that I caught sight of Miss Temple to leeward of the mizzen mast holding on to some gear that was belayed at the foot of the mast. As my gaze rested on her, the rope she grasped either overhauled itself or was detached from the pin, and she swung out to leeward. There were hencoops and rails and the mizzen shrouds to save her from going overboard; but there was nothing to prevent her from breaking a limb, or even her neck, if she let go. Though my legs yet preserved something of their old seafaring nimbleness, the slope of the deck made desperate work for them. Yet the girl must be reached, and at once. She did not appear to have sense enough to lower herself down the rope till her feet touched, in which posture she might have hung with safety. She maintained her first clutch of the gear, and swung above the deck to the height of some two, perhaps three feet. Keeling, who was clinging to the weather vang, did not seem to see her. The helmsmen grinding at the wheel heeded nothing but their business. Mr. Prance and the second officer clawing at the brass rail at the break of the poop, leaned to windward, with their eyes on the streaming rags of the maintopsail shouting commands.
There was only one means of arriving at the girl with any approach to swiftness. I dropped on to the deck, and went down upon my knees with my head to windward, and worked my way stern first in that attitude to the line of lee hencoops, along which I made shift to travel half jammed by my own weight against the bars of the coops, until, coming abreast of the girl, I got upon my legs, and firmly planting my left foot against the bottom of the row of boxes in which the fowls were immured, and leaning on my right leg in a fencing posture, I put my arms round her waist and told her to let go. She did so at once, as likely as not because she could hold on no longer. The weight of her noble figure was rather more than I had bargained for. I had thought to hold her fairly off the deck and ease her away, whilst in my arms, down to the hencoop behind, on which she could sit; but she was too much for me. I was forced to let her feet touch the planks, where, losing her balance, she threw her arm round my neck to save herself from falling. The next moment I was lodged upon the hencoop, she on my knee, and her arms still enclosing my head; but this was only for a breath or two. It was easy to lift her to my side, and there she sat, her fine face dark with blushes, and her eyes sparkling with alarm and confusion and twenty other passions and emotions, whilst the curve of her bosom rose and fell with hysteric swiftness.
‘What a very ridiculous position! It serves me right. I should have taken the captain’s advice. I should have gone below.’
This was all my haughty companion condescended to say. Not a syllable of thanks—not a glance of softness to reward me! However, to be reasonable, she could have scarcely been audible had she attempted more words. Even to catch the few sentences she uttered I had to strain my ear to the movement of her lips, off which the wind clipped her speech with a silencing yell.