"Well, sir, it's just this; it had been breezing up, and we double-reefed the mainsail, Captain Caudel not liking the look of the weather, when a slap of wind carried pretty nigh half the mast over the side. We reckon--for we can't see--that it's gone some three or four feet below the cross-trees. The sail came down with a run, and there was a regular mess of it, sir, the wessel being buried. We've had to keep her afore it until we could cut the wreckage clear, and now we're agoing to heave her to, and I'm to tell ye with Capt'n Caudel's compliments not to take any notice of the capers she may cut when she heads the sea."

"One moment. Is she sound in her hull?"

"Yes, sir."

"Heaven be praised! And how is the wind?"

"About nor'-nor'-east, sir."

"Then, of course, we've been running sou'-sou'-west, heading right into the open channel?"

He said yes.

"How does the weather look, Files?"

"Werry black and noisy, sir."

"Tell Caudel to let me see him whenever he can leave the deck," said I, unwilling to detain him lest he should say something to add to the terror of Grace, whose eyes were riveted upon him as though he were some frightful ghost or hideous messenger of death.

I took down the lamp and screened it, whilst he opened the cover and crawled out.

CHAPTER VI

SWEETHEARTS IN A STORM

No man could imagine that so heavy a sea was already running until Caudel hove the yacht to. The instant the helm was put down the dance began! As she rounded to a whole green sea struck her full abeam, and fell with a roar like a volcanic discharge upon her decks, staggering her to the heart--sending a throe of mortal agony through her, as one might have sworn. I felt that she was buried in the foam of that sea.

As she gallantly rose, still valiantly rounding into the wind, as though the spirit of the British soil in which had grown the hardy timber out of which she was manufactured was never stronger in her than now, the water that filled her decks roared cascading over the rails.

Grace sat by my side, her arm locked in mine; she was motionless with fear; her eyes had the fixed look of the sleep-walker's, nor will I deny that my own terror was extreme; for imagining that I had heard a shriek, I believed that my men had been washed overboard, and that we two were locked up in a dismasted craft that was probably sinking--imprisoned, I say, by reason of the construction of the companion cover, which, when closed, was not to be opened from within.

I waited a few minutes with my lips set, wondering what was to happen next, holding Grace close to me, and harkening with feverish ears for the least sound of a human voice on deck. There was a second blow--this time on the yacht's bow--followed by a sensation as of every timber thrilling, and by a bolt-like thud of falling water, but this time well forward. Immediately afterwards I heard Caudel shouting close against the skylight, and I cannot express the emotion, in truth, I may call it the transport of joy, his voice raised in me. It was like being rescued from a dreadful death that an instant before seemed certain.

I continued to wait, holding my darling to me; her head lay upon my shoulder, and she rested as though in a swoon. The sight of her white face was inexpressibly shocking to me, who very well knew that there was nothing I could say to soften her terrors amid such a sea as the yacht was now tumbling upon. Indeed, the vessel's motions had become on a sudden violently heavy. I was never in such a sea before; that is to say, in so small a vessel, and the leaping of the craft from peak to base, and the dreadful careering of her as she soared, lying down on her beam ends to the next liquid summit were absolutely soul subduing.

It was idle, however, to think of going on deck. I durst not leave my darling alone lest she should swoon and be thrown down and injured, perhaps killed; whilst, for myself, the legs of a man needed a longer apprenticeship to the sea than ever I had served, or had the faintest desire to serve, to qualify him for such capering planks as these, and I was quite sure that if I wished to break my neck I had nothing more to do than to make an attempt to stand.

Well, some twenty minutes, or, perhaps, half an hour pa.s.sed, during all which time I believed every moment to be our last, and I recollect cursing myself for being the instrument of introducing the darling of my heart into this abominable scene of storm in which, as I believed, we were both to perish. Why had I not gone ash.o.r.e yesterday? Did not my instincts advise me to quit the sea and take the railway? Why had I brought my pet away from the security of the Rue de Maquetra? Why, in the name of all the virtues, was I so impatient that I could not wait till she was of age, when I could have married her comfortably and respectably, freed from all obligations of ladders, dark lanterns, tempests, and whatever was next to come? I could have beaten my head upon the table. Never did I better understand what I have always regarded as a stroke of fiction--I mean the disposition of a man in a pa.s.sion to tear out his hair by the roots.

At the expiration, as I supposed, of twenty minutes, the hatch cover was opened, this time without any following screech and blast of wind, and Caudel descended. Had he been a beam of sunshine he could not have been more welcome to my eyes. He was clad from head to foot in oilskins, from which the wet ran as from an umbrella in a thunder-shower, and the skin and hue of his face resembled soaked leather.

"Well, Mr. Barclay, sir," he exclaimed, "and how have you been getting on? It's been a bad job; but there's nothen to alarm ye, I'm sure."

Then catching sight of Grace's face, he cried, "The young lady ain't been and hurt herself, I hope, sir?"

"Her fear and this movement," I answered, "have proved too much for her. I wish you would pull off your oilskins and help me to convey her to the lee side there. The edge of this table seems to be cutting me in halves," the fact being that I was to windward with the whole weight of my sweetheart, who rested lifelessly against me to increase the pressure, so that at every leeward stoop of the craft my breast was caught by the edge of the table with a sensation as of a knife cutting through my shirt.

He instantly whipped off his streaming waterproofs, standing without the least inconvenience whilst the decks slanted under him like a see-saw, and in a very few moments he had safely placed Grace on the lee locker with her head on a pillow. I made shift to get round to her without hurting myself, then cried to Caudel to sit and tell me what had happened.

"Well, it's just this, sir," he answered, "the mast has carried away some feet below the head of it. It went on a sudden in the squall in which the wind burst down upon us. Perhaps it was as well it happened, for she lay down to that there houtfly in a way so hobstinate that I did believe she'd never lift herself out of the water agin. But the sail came down when the mast broke, and I managed to get her afore it, though I don't mind owning to you now, sir, that what with the gear fouling the helm, and what with other matters which there ain't no call for me to talk about, 'twas as close a shave with us, sir, as ever happened at sea."

Grace moaned, opened her eyes and then shut them again, and moved her hand that I should take it. The companion cover lay a little way open, but though tons of water might be flying over the bow for aught I knew, not a drop glittered in the hatch. I could now, however, very clearly hear the roaring _hum_ of the gale, and catch the note of boiling waters; but these sounds were not so distracting but that Caudel and I clearly heard each other's voice.

"Is the yacht tight, do you think, Caudel?" cried I.

"I hope she is, sir."

"Hope! My G.o.d, but you must _know_, Caudel."

"Well, sir, she's adraining a little water into her--I'm bound to say it--but nothen that the pump won't keep under; and I believe that most of it finds its way into the well from up above."

I stared at him with a pa.s.sion of anxiety and dismay, but his cheery blue eyes steadfastly returned my gaze as though he would make me know that he spoke the truth--that matters were not worse than he represented them.

"Has the pump been worked?" I inquired.

He lifted his hand as I asked the question, and I heard the beat of the pump throbbing through the dull roar of the wind as though a man had seized the brake of it in response to my inquiry.

"This is a frightful situation to be in," said I, with a glance at Grace, who lay motionless, with her eyes shut, rendered almost insensible by the giddy and violent motion of the hull.

"It'll all come right, sir," he exclaimed; "daybreak 'll be here soon--" he looked up at the clock, "then we shall be able to see what to do."

"But what is to be done?"

"Plenty, sir. Tarn to first of all and secure the remains of the mast.

There's height enough left. We must secure him, I says, then wait for this here breeze to blow himself out, and then make sail and get away home as fast as ever we can."

"But is the vessel, wrecked aloft as she is, going to outlive such weather as this?" I cried, talking in a half-dazed way out of the sort of swooning feeling which came and went in my head like a pulse with the wild, sky-high flights and the headlong falls of the little vessel.

"I hope she will, I'm sure, sir. She was built for the seas of the Dogger, and ought to be able to stand the likes of this."

"Does much water come aboard?"

"Now and agin there's a splash, but she's doing werry well, sir. Ye see we ain't a canoe, nor a wherry. A hundred years ago the _Spitfire_ would have been reckoned a craft big enough to sail to Australia in."

"Was anyone hurt by the sea as you rounded to?"

"Bobby was washed aft, sir, but he's all right agin."

I plied him with further questions, mainly concerning the prospects of the weather, our chances, the drift of the yacht, that I might know into what part of the Channel we were being blown, and how long it would occupy to storm us at this rate into the open Atlantic; and then asking him to watch by Grace for a few minutes, I dropped on my knees, and crawled to my cabin, where I somehow contrived to scramble into my boots, coat and cap. I then made for the companion steps, still on my knees, and clawed my way up the hatch till I was head and shoulders above it, and there I stood looking.

I say looking, but there was nothing to see save the near, vast, cloud-like s.p.a.ces of foam, hovering as it seemed high above the rail as some black head of surge broke off the bow, or descending the pouring side of a sea like bodies of mist sweeping with incredible velocity with the breath of the gale. Past these dim ma.s.ses the water lay in blackness--a huge spread of throbbing obscurity. All overhead was mere rushing darkness. The wind was wet with spray, and forward there would show at intervals a dull shining of foam, flashing transversely across the labouring little craft.

It was blowing hard indeed, yet from the weight of the seas and the motions of the _Spitfire_, I could have supposed the gale severer than it was. I returned to the cabin, and Caudel, after putting on his oilskins and swallowing a gla.s.s of brandy and water--the materials of which were swaying furiously in a silver-plated swinging tray suspended over the table--went on deck, leaving the companion cover a little way open in case I desired to quit the cabin.

Until the dawn, and some time past it, I sat close beside Grace, holding her hand or bathing her brow. She never spoke, she seldom opened her eyes; indeed, she lay as though utterly prostrated, without power to articulate, or, perhaps, to think either. It was the effect of fear, however, rather than of nausea. At any rate, I remember hoping so, for I had heard of people dying of sea sickness, and if the weather that had stormed down upon us should last, it might end in killing her; whereas, the daylight, and, perhaps, some little break of blue sky would reanimate her if her sufferings were owing to terror only, and when she found the little craft buoyant and our lives in no danger, her spirits would rise and her strength return.

But what an elopement is this! thought I, as I gazed upon her sweet, white face and closed lids darkening the cheek with the shadowing of the fringes. One reads of fugitive lovers in peril from overset stage coaches, from detectives in waiting at railway stations, from explosions, earthquakes and collisions on land and ocean. But a gale of wind--a storm-dismantled dandy yacht of twenty-six tons furiously working in the thick of a wild Channel sea, where the surge swells large with the weight of the near Atlantic--here are conditions of a runaway match, the like of which are not to be found, I believe, outside of my own experience.