Captain Mugford Part 8

The Captain noted carefully the changing colour of the water as we drew over some bank, and he took bearings, too, from points on the land we had left nearly ten miles astern. In a few minutes he luffed a bit and sang out--

"Down with your foresail! Get in the jib."

The bowsprit pointed right in the wind's eye, and the boom hung fore and aft, the sail empty, as the cutter lost her headway.

"Is that anchor ready?"

"Aye, aye, sir!" replied Walter and Drake.

"Let go! About five fathoms, is it?" called the Captain.

"About that!" the boys answered.

"That's just what we want. Make fast! Now stow the mainsail, so that it won't be in the way of your lines, and fish. There, that will do!

Now, all to the lines! Who'll have the first fish?"

In a minute Drake hauled that up--a cod--and the fun commenced. Cod and ba.s.s, and now and then a halibut, as fast as we could bait and pull!

There was soon a lively flopping in our craft, and now and then a dog-fish would take hold, much to our annoyance, for generally he broke the hook or line, or else, if we got him in, made such a furious las.h.i.+ng about our legs that we had to finish him with a hatchet.

We lay at anchor there until we had had fis.h.i.+ng enough. About two o'clock we stopped, having caught, as near as the Captain could estimate, between one and two hundred pounds of cod, a dog-fish, and eleven sea-ba.s.s--not the striped ba.s.s, such as we took off the rocks with a troll line in rough water: that was the _Labrax lineatus_; but the sea-ba.s.s, the _Centropristes nigricans_, superior in t.i.tle, but inferior in every other way to the striped ba.s.s.

It was a job to pitch the fish together and out of the way, and then clean the blood, slime, and wet from our deck and get ready for making sail; but after some work it was done, and our lines stowed away.

"Now, boys," said the Captain, "we will have dinner, and get under way again. As the wind has hauled around to the east, we will take our course for the north. I want to show you that sh.o.r.e, it is so bold and wild. With such a stiff wind I reckon we can run up ten miles nearly, and then turn about and get home _easily_ before dark. I say, boys, won't Mr Clare wish he had had a hand in catching that haul?"

Having finished the cold dinner with such an appet.i.te as pleasure, exercise, and sea air give, we made sail and stood to the northward.

The breeze was so fresh before long that the Captain told us to take a reef in our mainsail. Walter held the helm, and in little more than an hour we were sailing near the grand rugged sh.o.r.e that Captain Mugford had wished us to see. Here and there, in little coves defended by rocky sides, were the cottages of fishermen, and then great headlands of cavernous stone dashed by the waves. Again the sh.o.r.e fell to a lower level, and pines and other trees cl.u.s.tered together to defy the storms, and give pleasure to the eye. Farther on, the roughness of the coast vanished for a few hundred yards to make place for a yellow sandy beach where was stretched a long seine. Opposite that piece of strand, and close by our cutter's course stood a small stony island, bearing a single invalid old pine, from whose topmost branch a great bald eagle rose and hovered over our craft. Then the sh.o.r.e grew again like an impregnable fortification, and made out to a sharp cape, on the point of which stood a lonely, snow-white lighthouse.

"There, boys, we must go about now," said the Captain, as we neared the cape. "But see how the wind has fallen. If it holds on in this way we shan't have enough to take us home before night. Let's see what o'clock it is. That lighthouse is seventeen miles from the point of our own cape."

The Captain fumbled away at his waist-band--encircling a rotundity like that described of Saint Nicholas--and pulled out his immense gold turnip.

"Columbus' compa.s.s! Twenty minutes to five! Come, Walter, haul in the mainsheet, and come up to the wind. Are you ready to go about? Well, down with the helm then. I'll tend the jib. Those boys are so busy examining the fish that we will not interrupt them."

"No, sir," I said, "we are ready for anything."

"Oh no, Bob," replied the Captain, "go on with your studies. There is nothing to do just now. Walter, you may steer by the sh.o.r.e. But I don't like this slackening of the breeze, and it is drawing more to the south-west; we shall have it right ahead soon. The sun looks ugly, too.

That murky red face foretells a row of some kind."

"I hope that we shall get the _Youth_ safe at her moorings before night comes, or a storm either--shall we not?" asked Harry.

"We'll hope so," answered Captain Mugford, who pulled out his pipe and filled it hard, continuing, "Who'll hand me out a light from the cuddy?"

I went in and struck one, and brought him a match, blazing famously.

"Thank, you," he said. "Drake--just," (puff puff)--"just shake--oh!

there goes that light!" I quickly brought him another--"just shake out--that--that--" (puff, puff). He had it all right now, the smoke coming in vast volumes; so he replaced his hat and removed the pipe from his teeth for a moment to complete the order--

"Drake, just shake that reef out of the mainsail."

"All right, sir!" said Drake. I helped him; but in half an hour the wind, as the Captain had foretold, was ahead, and not strong enough to fill the sails.

Fifteen or sixteen miles we were from home, with every indication that a heavy squall was to follow the calm settling down upon us. The dancing white caps of the morning had died away in a quiet, sullen sea, which only a land-swell moved. The sun had gone down to within a half-hour's distance of the horizon, s.h.i.+ning on the distant western cliffs, whose variety, boldness, and ruggedness were magnified in outline and intensified in colouring by the heavy, yellowish-red glare which fell on them, and the sun's rays shot out in long forks, piercing the dark blue of the sea at all points in the western semicircle of our view. The atmosphere had grown warm--very warm for a September afternoon.

We boys felt something portentous in the scene. The Captain grew uncomfortable, too, no longer laughing heartily or joining in our talk.

He kept his eyes on the sky, and smoked pipe after pipe.

Even Ugly ceased napping beside Walter, and, uttering a whining yawn, as if sleepy but uneasy, walked forward to the idle foresail, and stood there with extended nose to smell out, if he could, what was wrong.

So we lay for nearly an hour, our only movement being with the outgoing tide, the sails flapping with the slow swell of the sea. But when the sun had disappeared the wind commenced to come, first in little puffs, now from one quarter and then from another. The gale would be on us in a moment.

The Captain took the helm then, and ordered us to stand by and be ready to tend the sails.

"Look out, too, for the swinging of that boom," he said, "and make Ugly get out of the way and lie down somewhere."

Ugly, hearing that speech, did not wait for further commands, but stowed himself away at the foot of the mast.

Now the wind came in heavier puffs, and then in squalls from the east.

"I hope it will settle there," spoke out the Captain. "It is coming heavier, but I hope steady."

He kept his eyes on all parts of the now lowering sky, and presently added--

"Take two reefs in the mainsail and s.h.i.+ft the jib! Get the storm-jib up. Now hook on. Run it out. Hoist away."

That was done, no easy matter for novices in a heavy sea, and we flew away before the increasing gale. Fortunately the night was not very dark, there being a quarter moon to throw its light through the rifts of clouds.

How fast the sea got up! The wind grew heavier every moment. The mast of our little cutter creaked with each plunge, and the plunges were hard and quick. The scene was truly alarming, and we felt the danger of our situation. To be sure, we were comparatively safe if the gale should grow no worse; but it was increasing every moment in a manner that threatened in another hour to be too much for us. There was danger, too, that something might be carried away, or that, in the frothy sea and uncertain light, we might strike some of the sunken rocks that now and then stood off from sh.o.r.e like sentries. But the _Youth_ leapt furiously onward from one mad wave to another, our good Captain steering with a strong hand.

The black, broken clouds rolled close to the sea, which seemed striving madly to swallow them; but on they flew with the screams of the wind.

The thin moonlight, streaming unsteadily through the troops of clouds across the riven waves, had a ghastly effect--sometimes obscuring, sometimes exaggerating the terrors surrounding us. The sh.o.r.e, a mile to leeward, was to our sight only a bristling, indefinite terror; for there, where loomed the land we longed for, was the greatest peril--the line of fierce breakers that shouted their threats in terrible chorus.

I suppose we boys were all much terrified. I _quailed_ with dread, for it was my first experience of a storm on the water, and its time and appearance were so imposing.

One would never have suspected from Captain Mugford's manner that we were in any danger. His face was as calm and his hand as steady as if we were having the pleasantest sail imaginable; only the violence with which he smoked, ramming fingers full of tobacco into his pipe every few minutes, betokened any unusual excitement, but we knew how absorbed he was in his charge by his silence.

We were speechless, too, holding on fast to the backstays or gunwale to keep our places in the desperate leaps and lurches the gallant little craft was making. Ugly was soon thrown from his station, and, finding he could not keep legs or position anywhere unaided, went and ensconced himself between our skipper's legs.

Harder, heavier blew the wind, and wilder grew the sea, so that it seemed sometimes as if we must go over, and the bowsprit now buried itself in every billow. Then the Captain said to us in a calm, steady voice--

"Boys, you must get another reef in the mainsail and lower the foresail.

Now, be careful and steady about it. There is no hurry. Bob, you come here; the others can manage that work. You sit aft out of the way."

I did as directed; and the orders were speedily carried out without accident.

Boatswain's Half-Acre Reef, a low rock that stood out at sea, about three and a half miles south-east-by-east from our cape, now came in sight ahead of us to the windward. In the spectral light, and beaten on by the waves, it looked like some sea monster moving in the water. As we were going we should probably pa.s.s close to its lee side in about ten minutes, but the wind blew a tempest, and the sea increased so in a few minutes that our peril was terrible. For two hours we had battled-- though evidently the storm was soon to be the conqueror.

Several seas came aboard in angry haste, and the punt, which had been in tow all day, broke loose and was carried away. Another sea, stronger than its fellows, suddenly struck us a tremendous blow. The cutter heeled over, so that the water boiled above the lee gunwale. The a.s.saulting sea, too, broke up and over the weather-side, and drenched us all in its cataract. To increase our terror, a cry came from Alfred, who had been tossed from his hold and nearly cast overboard, but he caught the backstay as our yet unconquered boat rose from the blow like some brave but wounded animal. The water was several inches deep about our feet, and the good _Youth_ had lost half its buoyancy.

Then came the Captain's voice again, steady and strong, but full of feeling--