Spurling tried to rise to his feet. The dory jumped like a bucking horse, and he caught the gunwale just in time to escape being pitched overboard.
"Jerusalem!" he gasped. "Guess I won"t try that again! Hands and knees are good enough for me. Hold her, Perce! I"ll throw out some of this water."
Kneeling in the flood that swashed from bow to stern, he bailed vigorously until the boat was fairly clear.
"No use wearing ourselves out trying to keep her head to it with the oar!" said he. "I"m going to rig a drug!"
Directly under Percy"s arms, as he sculled, was a trawl-tub containing their purchases at Matinicus. These Jim tossed into the stern. Taking the tub, he crept forward. A lanyard of six-thread manila, put across double between holes in the top of its sides, formed a rope bridle or bail. To the middle of this bail Jim tied the thirty-foot painter with a clove hitch. Then he dropped the tub over the bow.
"Pull in your oar, Perce!" he called out.
Percy obeyed gladly. A heavy sea struck the dory. She reared, shot back, and started to swing sidewise. Then the "drug" caught her, and she seesawed again up into the wind and rode springily.
The tub, filled with water, and drifting on its side thirty feet before the bow at the end of the straightened-out painter, formed a floating anchor, which held the dory head to the wind and sea. Practically submerged, and offering the gale no surface to get hold of, it moved much more slowly than the high-sided boat, and so r.e.t.a.r.ded its course.
Jim came crawling aft again.
"Guess that"ll hold her!" he exclaimed. "I"ve strengthened the lanyard with some ground-line, and it ought to last us through the night. We"ll be as snug as if we were in Sprowl"s Cove, hey, Perce?"
Percy could hardly agree with him. The roaring, rain-shot blackness, roofed with murky clouds and floored with rushing surges, was not calculated to inspire confidence in a landsman. With every sea the dory leaped back several feet, until the straightened painter brought her up.
Showers of spray flew over the boys. It was well both were clad in oilskins.
They were not entirely without light. The water was firing. Every breaking wave dissolved in phosph.o.r.escence. The tub before the bow was outlined in radiance; the whipping painter was trans.m.u.ted to a rope of silver; and as the dory split the crashing rollers they streamed away in sparkles of ghostly flame. Even in their peril the boys could not help appreciating the weird beauty of the display.
"Wonderful, isn"t it?" said Percy. "Say, Jim, how far south"s the nearest land?"
"Somewhere around two thousand miles, I guess. Too far to interest us any. I think it"s one of the West Indies."
The wind was growing stronger, the sea rougher. Now and then a young flood set both boys bailing, Jim with the bucket, Percy with the scoop.
"Won"t do to let it gain too much on us," remarked Jim. "She can"t sink; but if she should fill it"d be pretty uncomfortable."
The rain had ceased; the clouds did not hang so low. Suddenly Percy gave a whoop of joy.
"Look in the west!"
Not far above the horizon appeared a rift of clear blue sky, sown with stars. Longer and wider it grew. Other rifts added themselves to it, and in an unbelievably short time the entire heaven was swept clean. But somehow the wind seemed to blow harder than before.
"How soon will it calm down?" asked Percy.
Jim shook his head.
"Can"t say! May be a dry blow for two days longer."
He looked eastward.
"What"s that coming? Steamer?"
Sure enough it was. Below the white light on the masthead appeared and disappeared the red and green, obscured intermittently by the tossing waves. Soon they could be seen all the time. Percy began to grow excited.
"Suppose they"ll pick us up?"
"Not a chance in a thousand. It"s too rough for the lookout to spy our boat, and, even if the steamer should come close, we could never make her hear. She"s either a tramp or an ocean liner from Halifax for Portland."
On she plowed unswervingly and majestically, straight toward them.
"I"m afraid she"s coming too near for comfort," said Jim, anxiously.
"She might run us down and never know it. Lots of fishermen have gone that way. Ship that oar in the scull-hole. I"m going to haul in the drug."
He lifted the trawl-tub aboard and sprang quickly aft.
"We"ll know pretty quick whether she"s likely to pa.s.s ahead or astern.
We can"t count on being seen. We"ve got to look out for ourselves."
Freed from its floating anchor, the dory bobbed wildly. Wielding his oar skilfully, Spurling held her bow to the north, ready to scull for the last inch, or to let her drop back, as the approach of the steamer might make it advisable.
Closer and closer came the big boat; her lights oscillated with pendulum-like regularity as she rolled on the heavy seas.
"She"ll pa.s.s astern," was Jim"s verdict. "Won"t do to drift in front of her."
He sculled strongly, keeping an anxious eye on the threatening monster.
Percy"s hair bristled.
"Harder, Jim!" he shouted. "She"s going to run us down! Steamer ahoy!
Keep off! Keep off!"
The rushing foam smothered his cries. Meanwhile Spurling worked like a steam-engine. Two lives hung on his oar-blade.
As the knife-like stem sheared past, close astern, the green eye disappeared; the red glared menacingly down from the huge bulk looming overhead. Then the lofty black side swept by, flashing an occasional ray from a lighted port-hole. The screw gave them a sickening moment, but they soon tossed safely astern, breathing hard, eyes on the dwindling leviathan, wallowing westward.
Jim spoke first: "Close as they make "em! I"m glad that"s over!"
Percy agreed with all his heart. Jim had discovered that the tub was becoming a bit shaky, so he reinforced the lanyard, and strengthened the bottom by binding it with ground-line. Before long it was towing again in front of the bow, as good as new.
Hours pa.s.sed, but the intensity of the gale did not slacken. The sea was frightfully rough. It kept the boys bailing continually.
Dawn broke at last. On the eastern horizon grew a pale light, against which the ragged, savagely leaping crests were silhouetted weirdly. It brightened to a crimson glow, and soon the sun was shooting its fiery arrows across the heaving, glittering waste.
The forenoon wore slowly on as they drifted steadily south. The water around the dory was alive with whirlpools. Gigantic green seas rushed down as if to overwhelm her, but she flirted her bow aloft and rode them stanchly.
Percy, glancing to starboard, saw a black fin cutting the slope of a watery ridge.
"Shark, Jim?"
"Yes. And there"s another to port. They"re looking for trouble. They"ll stick by till we"re out of this sc.r.a.pe or in a worse one."
He was right. The sun reached its zenith and began to descend, but still the black fins wove their ceaseless circles round the boat.