"Help, ahoy, look out!" sang out Bob and Dick in chorus, well-nigh
paralysed with fright. "Ahoy there, look out ahead!"
But, in spite of their cries, the phantom ship, whose proportions became
all the more magnified the nearer she approached, rose upon them
steadily out of the mist, growing into a gruesome reality each second,
her hull towering over the little cutter as she bore down upon her, like
a giant above a pigmy!
"Help, ahoy, look out there!" they once more shouted frantically.
"Help--ahoy!"
It was all in vain, though, their shouts and cries being unnoticed.
The next moment the on-coming vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on
or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the
gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound
and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals--the little yacht
heeling over the while until she was almost on her beam-ends.
Had the vessel caught her midships, she would have at once crushed her
like an eggshell; as it was, the fluke of one of her anchors, which was
hanging from her bows ready for letting go in case of emergency, the
barque being not yet clear of soundings, got foul of the cutter's
rigging, sweeping her mast and boom away, the stays snapping under the
strain as if they were packthread.
Poor little cutter! She was left a complete wreck and nearly full of
water; still rocking to and fro from the violence of the collision, even
after the craft that had done all the mischief had again, seemingly, re-
transformed herself into a phantom ship and faded away in the mist that
hung over the sea, like the creation of a dream!
It was a very bad dream, though; and Bob and Dick gave themselves up for
lost altogether.
Their fate, drifting helplessly about, an hour or so before, hungry and
miserable, had seemed desperate enough; but their slight sleep, with the
subsequent awakening to the knowledge that the wind had sprung up again
and was bearing them once more in some certain direction, had restored
their courage and revived their hopes.
This courage, too, had became more courageous, this hope more hopeful on
the approach of the barque; for, they believed she would take them on
board and restore them by and by to their friends, advancing so
gallantly as she did towards them, like an angel, so Dick thought.
But, now!
What were the calamities which they so recently bewailed in comparison
with the present?
Then, the yacht might have been at the mercy of the mist and tide; but
she was still staunch and sound, capable when a breeze blew once more of
wafting them home--whereas, now, the little cutter was dismasted and
water-logged, nay, even sinking for all they knew!
Thus, their present position was a thousandfold more terrible than the
one before.
But, still, only boys though they were, hope did not yet quite desert
them.
The indomitable courage of youth triumphed over disaster.
For a few seconds neither could speak.
However, when the ship had disappeared, going away as silently as she
had approached them, they bestirred themselves to see what damage the
cutter had sustained.
Bob was the first to recall his scattered wits.
"Well, they haven't sunk us, as I was afraid they would, Dick!" said he.
"I wonder if any of the planks are really started?"
"How can we see, Master Bob?" asked Dick anxiously. "So as to know if
she be all right?"
"Why, by baling her out," he answered. "If we lessen the water in her,
then we'll know she's all right."
"But if the water don't go down?"
"Then, _we_ will!" replied Bob rather curtly. "Have you got anything to
bale her out with?"
"Well, Master Bob," observed Dick, grinning, "fur a young gen'leman as
is so sharp, you've got a orful bad mem'ry! Don't 'ee recollect the
booket as ye helped me fur to wash down the decks wi' this very
marnin'?"
"Dear me, Dick, I declare I quite forgot that!" said Bob, with a laugh,
seeing Dick's grin; for, it was not so dark now in their immediate
vicinity, the breeze having lifted the fog slightly from the surface of
the water. "Where is the bucket stored?"
"In the locker, joost by 'ee," was Dick's response, as he waded through
the water and came up to his companion. "Stop, I'll get 'im for 'ee!
I'll have to make a dive fur he, though!"
"Have you got it?" inquired Bob, after Dick had groped about for some
time, popping his head under water and coming up at intervals for
breath. "Have you got it?"
"'Ees," said he at length, lugging out the bucket, "I've got 'im!"
Then, they set to work, each using it alternately.
The exertion did them both good, too, standing up as they were to their
middles in water; for, it prevented them shivering with cold as they had
before done.
Bucketful after bucketful they emptied over the side; and, still they
did not appear to decrease the quantity the cutter contained to any
appreciable extent, bale they, as they baled, their hardest!
Gradually, however, the after-thwart became clear.
"Hooray!" exclaimed Bob. "We're gaining on it."
This inspired them with renewed strength; and, after nearly an hour's
hard work, they had so lessened the water that only a small portion now
remained washing about under the bottom boards of the boat, which,
recovering all her old buoyancy, floated again with a high freeboard,
light as a cork, above the surface of the sea, instead of being level
with it as before.
"That's a good job done!" said Dick. "I wish that theer murderin' shep
hadn't a-bruk our mast; fur, we'd soon been all right!"
"While you're about it, Dick," said Bob, "you might, just as well, wish
she hadn't carried the mast and boom away with her. I don't believe
they've left us anything!"
No, the colliding ship had made a "clean sweep" of all their spars and
rigging and everything; hardly a rope's-end remaining attached to the
cutter, beyond a part of the mainsheet and a bit of the forestay, which
latter was hanging down from the bowsprit, the only spar the yacht had
left.
Not a single thing of all her deck-fittings, either, had the little
vessel to the good; even her tiller had been wrenched off and the rudder
smashed.
Nor were there any oars left in the little craft; though, even if there
had been, the yacht was too heavy for boys like Bob and Dick to have
made her move at the most infinitesimal rate of speed.
It is true, there was the old gaff-topsail still in the fore-peak, as
well as a spare jib; but they had nothing to spread them out to the wind
with, or affix them to.
They were, in fact, oar-less, sail-less, helpless!
"I don't see what we can do," said Bob, when they had looked over all
the boat, in case something perchance might have escaped their notice.
"We can only hope and pray!"
"Aye, do 'ee pray, Master Bob," replied Dick eagerly. "P'r'aps God'll
hear us and send us help!"
So, then and there the two boys knelt down together side by side in the
battered boat, that drifted about at the mercy of the wind and sea,
imploring the aid of Him who heeds those who call upon Him for succour,
in no wise refusing them or turning a deaf ear to their prayers!
By and by, as if in answer to their earnest supplications, the day
dawned; when, the mist, which yet lingered over the water, hanging about
here and there in little patches, like so many floating islands, was
either swallowed up by the sea or absorbed into the air, as if by magic.
Bob and Dick now got some idea as to the points of the compass, even if
they were not able to tell precisely where they were; for, as the day
advanced, a rosy tinge crept upwards over a far-off quarter of the
horizon which they knew instinctively to be the east, the birthplace of
all light!
This tint, almost like a blush, spread quickly over the sky, reaching
away to the north and again south, coming full in both their faces and
making them glow.
The bright hue then gradually melted into a ruddier tone, which first
darkened into purple and red and then rapidly changed to a greenish sort
of neutral tone that, after an interval, finally became merged into the
pure ultramarine of the zenith; for, the heavens were now as clear as a
bell, no mist or fog or cloud obscuring the expanse of the empyrean.
A sort of golden vapour then, all of a sudden, flooded the east, which
in another second gave place to the red rays of the crimson sun; though
the latter did not seem so much to rise, but rather appeared to Bob, who
was watching intently the various changes that occurred, to jump in an
instant above the sea, glorifying it far and near with its presence and
warming it into life,
This warmth soon cheered the boys, as the light banished the despondent
feelings inseparable, as a rule, from darkness and, beyond that, the
death-like stillness around, which had previously added to their fears,
was banished by the new stir and movement observable in everything.
Previously, the sea had risen and fallen tumidly, as if Father Neptune
had been asleep and its monotonous pulsation was caused by his deep,
long-drawn breathing; but, now, it crisped and sparkled in the sunshine,
whilst its surface was broken by innumerable little wavelets, like
curls, that grew into swell-crested billows anon, and, later on still,
into great rolling waves as the wind got up--this blowing steadily from
the eastwards first and then veering round south, following the course
of the orb whose heat gave it being.
Nor was inanimate nature only stirring.
Grey and silver sea-gulls hovered over the little cutter, all sweeping
down curiously every now and then to see what the boys were doing there
in that mastless and oar-less boat out on the wide waters; and,
presently, a shoal of mackerel rose round about them, so thickly that
Dick thought he could scoop up some in the buckets, only the fish were
too wary and dived down below the surface the moment he stretched his
arm out over the side beyond his reach.
A couple of porpoises, too, swam by, playing leap-frog again; and, after
these, a much larger monster, which might possibly have been a grampus,
though Bob could tell nothing about it, not knowing what it was. The
movements of all these, with the constantly-changing appearance of the
sea, now blue, now green, now brown, as some cloud shadow passed over
it, made up a varied panorama such as neither of the two lads ever saw
or thought of before!
Ships, also, hove in sight and disappeared on the horizon, their white
sails gleaming out in the far-off distance; one moment high in the air
as if bound skywards, the next sinking into the curving depths of the
sea.
Now and again, too, the smoke-wreath of some passing steamer, coasting
along more speedily than the sailing craft, would sacrilegiously blot
the blue of the heavens!
But, all the while, though the distant ships might sail along to their
haven, and the steamers shape shorter courses to their port independent
of wind and tide alike, the poor dismasted, dismantled little yacht was
the sport of all alike; first setting down Channel with the ebb, as if
going out on a cruise into the wide Atlantic, and then again up Channel
with the flood towards Dover.
The boat was ever drifting and tossed about ever, like a battered
shuttlecock, by the battledore currents, some four of which contend for
the mastery throughout the livelong day in that wonderful waterway, the
English Channel; two always setting east, relieving each other in turn,
and two west, with a cross-tide coming atop of them, twice in every
twenty-four hours, trying fruitlessly to soothe the differences of the
quarrelsome quartette!