It now occurred to me that I might accentuate the signal of the smoke by letting fall the foresail, for here was a space of canvas that would not only catch the eye, but suggest the hull as a still inhabited wreck that was on fire. I called to Miss Temple. She looked up eagerly.
‘Do you see those ropes leading to the deck from the arms of this yard?’ said I, pointing.
‘Yes.’
‘I want you to haul them taut, Miss Temple—gather in the slack to prevent the yard from swinging, as I mean to get upon it.’
She understood me perfectly. Her jewelled fingers flashed upon the rope as she threw the brace off the belaying pin, and I gazed down with a smile of deep admiration at her noble figure whilst she swayed at the line tightening and then belaying it again.
‘You should have been a sailor’s daughter,’ I cried; ‘there is the true skill of the ancient mariner in your trick of holding on with one hand and making fast with the other. Will you please now tighten the brace on the right-hand side.’
She did so, and I got upon the yard and, ‘laying out’ upon it, as it is called, severed with my knife the ropes with which the canvas was frapped to the spar, and down fell the sail with a large rent right amidships of it, though that signified nothing in a square of white that was to serve as a signal only. I descended to the deck.
‘Why have you loosed that sail?’ inquired Miss Temple. I explained. ‘But will not the wreck now blow away from that ship?’
‘No,’ said I; ‘she will fall off and come to. But the yard must be trimmed to achieve that.’
So saying I let go the weather-brace and swung the yard fore and aft as far as I could bring it, then overhauled the clew-garnets, that all there was of the sail might show. The hull slewed to the pressure, then hung quiet; meanwhile I continued to feed the blaze, heaping on rugs and blankets and so firing up that at times the smoke hung as thick to leeward as a thundercloud.