‘Yash! yash!’ vociferated the fellow who clasped the mast, frantically brandishing his arms. ‘Ve are sheepwreck—you veel take us—ve starve!’
The captain looked and hardly seemed to know what to say.
‘How long have you been adrift?’ he bawled.
The fellow, who wore a red nightcap, shook it till the tassel danced to the violent gestures of his head. He evidently did not understand the question. ‘Take us!’ he shrieked;—‘ve starve!’
The boat was now on the bow, within pistol-shot from the forecastle rail.
‘Mind your helm, Captain Braine,’ I suddenly shouted, ‘or she’ll be aboard you!’ for my young and, in those days, keen eyes had marked the action of the fellow who steered the boat, and even as I bawled out, the head of the little fabric swept round with a fellow in the bows flourishing a boathook, to which was attached a length of line, and others standing by ready to help him when he should have hooked on.
‘Steady as she goes!’ cried Captain Braine.
‘Oh Mr. Dugdale,’ shrieked Miss Temple, ‘they will get on board of us!’
The boat’s head drove sheering alongside into our bow just forward of the fore-chain plates. I saw the fellow erect in her head fork out his boathook to catch hold.
‘Let go!’ roared a voice forward. The figure of Joe Wetherly overhung the rail, poising either an iron marline-spike or a belaying-pin, or some short bar of metal; this I saw. Then he hurled it at the moment that the boathook had caught a plate. The missile struck the man full on the head; he fell like a statue in the bottom of the boat, and the boat herself ground past us as the barque, to the impulse of her great overhanging squares of studdingsail, swept onwards at some seven or eight knots in the hour.