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Heru and I ducked down into the haze like dab-chicks and held our breath. Straight on towards us came the toiling ship, the dip of oars resonant in the hollow fog and a ripple babbling on her cutwater plainly discernible. Oh, oh! Hoo, hoo! How high, how high!" sounded the sleepy song of the rowers till they were looming right abreast and we could smell their damp hides in the morning air.
You young fellows don't seem to have any feeling for what's proper." He made a convulsive gesture with his right arm. "Never mind. Nothing can make much difference. I would just as soon let the old thing go about the world with a bare cutwater," he cried sadly. Then as the boat got away from the steps he raised his voice on the edge of the quay with comical animosity: "I would!
Pilot," returned Barnstable; "but who is to justify my moving without orders, to Captain Munson? I have it in black and white, to run the Ariel into this feather-bed sort of a place, and I must at least have it by signal or word of mouth from my betters, before my cutwater curls another wave.
The sea woke up under the push of the sharp cutwater, and whispered softly to the gliding craft in that tender and rippling murmur in which it speaks sometimes to those it nurses and loves. Lingard stood by the taff-rail listening, with a pleased smile till the Flash began to draw close to the only other vessel in the anchorage.
After this the spur-shores were knocked away, and to the blare of trumpets and the roll of drums, Mrs Saint Leger dashed a bottle of wine against the great cutwater of the gaily bedizened ship as she began to move down the ways, exclaiming, as she did so: "God bless the good ship Nonsuch and all who are to sail in her!"
Her sharp white bow cleaved the blue water of the way with slow, irresistible power. Her speed increased. In a few minutes twin waves of blue were curling away from her cutwater as, smoothly and swiftly, she raced across the bay and out of sight round the first bend of the wide mouthed Chokohatchee River. Roger Payne stood looking up the river long after the boat was out of sight.
We soon rejoined the ship, quite elated with our prize, and sent her to Jamaica in charge of the purser. In the course of this cruise we fell in with two American sloops of war, which we chased, and as they did not shorten sail nor answer the private signal, we fired at the nearest; the shot passed through her cutwater.
So she measured her actions accordingly, read, played the phonograph, went here and there over the yacht, often taking her stand in the bow and peering down the cutwater to watch the antics of some humorous porpoise or to follow the smother of spray where the flying fish broke. In fact, she conducted herself exactly as she would have done on board a passenger ship.
There was no time for any effort to avoid the danger; and even had there been, we were too much paralysed by its imminence, to make such an effort. The whale was scarcely twelve yards off certainly not twenty. Behind it stretched a foaming wake, straight as an arrow. Its vast mountainous head ploughed up the waves like a ship's cutwater, piling high the foam and spray before it.
I was upon the point of turning round, and seeking the nest where I had left my dove sleeping in conscious security, when, to my horror, I beheld the Eos' pinnace, full-manned and double-banked, the wave foaming up her cutwater, and roaring under her sixteen oars, rapidly round the rocky hummock that formed the eastern horn of the little bay.
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