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Without delay, a small jury-mast was rigged up aft, attached to the stump of the mizzen-mast, and one on the main-deck, close to where the main-mast bitts yet remained, as it was thought better not to step the jury-masts too far forward, for fear of the vessel plunging her bows under.
Next morning I scrambled on deck, and found the brig plunging away into a heavy sea, with a strong southerly wind, the coast just distinguishable over our starboard quarter. The captain gave me a grim smile as I made my way aft. "Well, leddie, how do you like it?" he inquired. "Thank you, pretty well," I answered; "but I hope we sha'n't have to wait long for breakfast." He smiled again.
"Here's plenty o' room here, sir, just at the top, but it goes aft. This can't be toward the bows. But it was this way as the knocking came, warn't it?" "No, no, no," we all cried. "The other way." "Look at that," growled Bob. "My head can't be right yet, or else it's the darkness as confooses a man. It's like being in a thick fog and having to steer." "Try again," I said.
The sea broke over us as we lay in the trough, deluging us with water from the forecastle, aft, to the binnacles; and very often as the ship descended with a plunge, it was with such force that I really thought she would divide in half with the violence of the shock.
Ben declared that his income only admitted light fore and aft, but that with skillful decoration they could at least travesty the sunshine, and so they tried to reproduce its effects by wall hangings of faint yellow and pale green, by chintz-covered bedrooms that seemed to blossom with roses, and living rooms sweet with fresh flowers.
Granted a capful of wind on his beam, a fleet keel under foot, and a complacent skipper aft, the flight direct was perhaps the means of escape the sailor loved above all others.
He was afraid of my youth, feared that I lacked the strength and the nerve. But when he saw me successfully wrestle the schooner through several bouts, he went below to breakfast. Fore and aft, all hands were below at breakfast. Had she broached to, not one of them would ever have reached the deck.
"Couldn't be worse;" and with that he clawed his way aft again, grasping every stanchion or shroud on his way, like a parroquet in a cage. The clouds above broke somewhat towards morning, but there was no sign of abatement in the tempest. Here and there through the rifts the glimmer of the stars might be seen, and once the pale moon gleamed through the storm wreath.
For the sake of old friendship and family ties, for instance, he might be even desirous of binding to his own interests a man who was known to have a large number of personal adherents in the important State of Oaxaca. That very man stood aft upon the deck of the Goshhawk when the boat of Colonel Guerra touched her side, but he did not at once come forward to extend a greeting.
"If it was not for Mary and the other ladies," said David, "he might consent; but the risk to them would be too fearful were we to fail." Hitherto they had not had the opportunity of seeing Mary. Finding, however, that the Frenchmen as well as the English crew were engaged in making the ship snug, they stole aft and found their way to the cabin door. "May we come in?" said Harry.
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