Love Me Little, Love Me Long Part 64

Lucy gave a little scream. The sail, too, made a report like the crack of a pistol.

"Oh, what is that?" cried Lucy.

"Wind, mum," replied the boatman, composedly.

"What is that purple line on the water, sir, out there, a long way beyond the other boat?

"Wind, mum."

"It seems to move. It is coming this way."

"Ay, mum, that is a thing that always makes to leeward," said the old fellow, grinning. "I'll take in a couple of reefs before it comes to us."

Meantime, the moment the lugger lowered her mainsail, the schooner, divining, as it appeared, her intention, did the same, and luffed immediately, and was on the new tack first of the two.

"Ay, my la.s.s," said the old boatman, "you are smartly handled, no doubt, but your square stern and your try-hanglar sail they will take you to leeward of us pretty soon, do what you can."

The event seemed to justify this a.s.sertion; the little lugger was on her best point of sailing, and in about ten minutes the distance between the two boats was slightly but sensibly diminished. The lateen, no doubt, observed this, for she began to play the game of short tacks, and hoisted her mainsail, and carried on till she seemed to sail on her beam-ends, to make up, as far as possible, by speed and smartness for what she lost by rig in beating to windward.

"They go about quicker than we do," said Talboys.

"Of course they do; they have not got to dip their sail, as we have, every time we tack."

This was the true solution, but Mr. Talboys did not accept it.

"We are not so smart as we ought to be. Now you go to the helm, and I and the boy will dip the lug."

The old boatman took the helm as requested, and gave the word of command to Mr. Talboys. "Stand _by_ the foretack."

"Yes," said Mr. Talboys, "here I am."

"Let _go_ the fore-tack"; and, contemporaneously with the order, he brought the boat's head round.

Now this operation is always a nice one, particularly in these small luggers, where the lug has to be dipped, that is to say, lowered, and raised again on the opposite side of the mast; for the lug should not be lowered a moment too soon, or the boat, losing her way, would not come round; nor a moment too late, lest the sail, owing to the new position the boat is taking under the influence of the rudder, should receive the wind while between the wind and the mast, and so the craft be taken aback, than which nothing can well happen more disastrous.

Mr. Talboys, though not the accomplished sailor he thought himself, knew this as well as anybody, and with the boy's help he lowered the sail at the right moment; but, getting his head awkwardly in the way, the yard, in coming down, hit him on the nose and nearly knocked him on to his beam-ends. It would have been better if it had done so quite instead of bounding off his nose on to his shoulder and there resting; for, as it was, the descent of the sail being thus arrested half-way at the critical moment, and the boat's head coming round all the same, a gust of wind caught the sail and wrapped it tight round the mast to windward. The boy uttered a cry of terror so significant that Lucy trembled all over, and by an uncontrollable impulse leaned despairingly back and waved her white handkerchief toward the antagonist boat. The old boatman with an oath darted forward with an agility he could not have shown ash.o.r.e.

The effect on the craft was alarming. If the whole sail had been thus taken aback, she would have gone down like lead; for, as it was, she was driven on her side and at the same time driven back by the stern; the whole sea seemed to rise an inch above her gunwale; the water poured into her at every drive the gusts of wind gave her, and the only wonder seemed why the waves did not run clean over her.

In vain the old boatman, cursing and swearing, tugged at the canvas to free it from the mast. It was wrapped round it like Dejanira's shirt, and with as fatal an effect; the boat was filling; and as this brought her lower in the water, and robbed her of much of her buoyancy, and as the fatal cause continued immovable, her destruction was certain.

Every cheek was blanched with fear but Lucy's, and hers was red as fire ever since she waved her handkerchief; so powerful is modesty with her s.e.x. A true virgin can blush in death's very grasp.

In the midst of this agitation and terror, suddenly the boat was hailed. They all looked up, and there was the lateen coming tearing down on them under all her canvas, both her broad sails spread out to the full, one on each side. She seemed all monstrous wing. The lugger being now nearly head to wind, she came flying down on her weather bow as if to run past her, then, lowering her foresail, made a broad sweep, and brought up suddenly between the lugger and the wind. As her foresail fell, a sailor bounded over it on to the forecastle, and stood there with one foot on the gunwale, active as Mercury, eye glowing, and a rope in his hand.

"Stand by to lower your mast," roared this sailor in a voice of thunder to the boatman of the lugger; and the moment the schooner came up into the wind athwart the lugger's bows he bounded over ten feet of water into her, and with a turn of the hand made the rope fast to her thwart, then hauling upon it, brought her alongside with her head literally under the schooner's wing.

He and the old boatman then instantly unstepped the mast and laid it down in the boat, sail and all. It was not his great strength that enabled them to do this (a dozen of him could not have done it while the wind pressed on the mast); it was his address in taking all the wind out of the lug by means of the schooner's mainsail. The old man never said a word till the work was done; then he remarked, "That was clever of you."

The new-comer took no notice whatever. "Reef that sail, Jack," he cried; "it will be in the lady's face by and by; and heave your bailer in here; their boat is full of water."

"Not so full as it would if you hadn't brought up alongside," said the old boatman.

"Do you want to frighten the lady?" replied the sailor, in his driest and least courtier-like way.

"I am not frightened, Mr. Dodd," said Lucy. "I was, but I am not now."

"Come and help me get the water out of her, Jack. Stay! Miss Fountain had better step into the dry boat, meantime. Now, Jack, look alive; lash her longside aft."

This done, the two sailors, one standing on the lugger's gunwale, one on the schooner's, handed Miss Fountain into the schooner, and gave her the cushions of the lugger to sit upon. They then went to work with a will, and bailed half a ton of water out.

When she was dry David jumped back into his own boat. "Now, Miss Fountain, your boat is dry, but the sea is getting up, and I think, if I were you, I would stay where you are."

"I mean to," said the lady, calmly. "Mr. Talboys, _would_ you mind coming into this boat? We shall be safer here; it--it is larger."

The gentleman thus addressed was embarra.s.sed between two mortifications, one on each side him. If he came into David's boat he would be second fiddle, he who had gone out of port first fiddle. If he stuck to the lugger Lucy would go off with Dodd, and he would look like a fool coming ash.o.r.e without her. He hesitated.

David got impatient. "Come, sir," he cried, "don't you hear the lady invite you? and every moment is precious." And he held out his hand to him.

Talboys decided on taking it, and he even unbent so far as to jump vigorously--so vigorously that, David pulling him with force at the same moment, he came flying into the schooner like a cannon-ball, and, toppling over on his heels, went down on the seat with his head resting on the weather gunwale, and his legs at a right angle with his back.

"That is one way of boarding a craft," muttered David, a little discontentedly; then to the old boatman: "Here, fling us that tarpaulin. I say, here is more wind coming; are you sure you can work that lugger, you two?"

"We will be ash.o.r.e before you can, now there's n.o.body to bother us,"

was the prompt reply.

"Then cast loose; here we are, drifting out to sea."

The old man cast the rope loose; David hauled it on board, and the schooner shot away from her companion and bore up north-north-west, leaving the luggar rocking from side to side on the rising waves. But the next minute Lucy saw her sail rise, and she bore up and stood northeast.

"Good-by to you, little horror," said Lucy.

"We shall fall in with her a good many times more before we make the land," said David Dodd.

Lucy inquired what he meant; but he had fallen to hauling the sheet aft and making the sail stand flatter, and did not answer her. Indeed, he seemed much more taken up with Jack than with her, and, above all, entirely absorbed in the business of sailing the boat.

She was a little mortified at this behavior, and held her tongue.

Talboys was sulky, and held his. It was a curious situation. In the hurry and bustle, none of the parties had realized it; but now, as the boat breasted the waves, and all was silent on board, they had time to review their position.

Talboys grew gloomier and gloomier at the poor figure he cut. Lucy kept blushing at intervals as she reflected on the obligation she had laid herself under to a rejected lover. The rejected lover alone seemed to mind his business and nothing else; and, as he was almost ludicrously unconscious that he was doing a chivalrous action, a misfortune to which those who do these things are singularly liable, he did not gild the transaction with a single graceful speech, and permitted himself to be more occupied with the sails than with rescued beauty.

Succeeding events, however, explained, and in some degree excused, this commonplace behavior.

The next time they tacked some spray came flying in, and wetted all hands. Lucy laughed. The lugger had also tacked, and the two boats were now standing toward each other; when they met the lugger had weathered on them some sixty or seventy yards.

A furious rain now came on almost horizontally, and the sailors arranged the tarpaulin so as to protect Mr. Talboys and Miss Fountain.

"But you will be wet through yourself, Mr. Dodd. Will you not come under shelter too?"