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However, the launch would have had no chance of overtaking us but for the unlucky accident to the tiller, which had made the Fair Maid unmanageable for the moment, and caused her to come up to the wind. They were thus able to draw very near us before the man at the helm had contrived to rig up a makeshift tiller out of a splinter off the gunwale.
It also appeared that at the moment when I ordered the course of the Kasanumi to be altered, the Akatsuki was close astern of us, and broad on our port quarter, the consequence being that the shifting of our helm carried us so close athwart her bows that she all but touched us when crossing our stern.
Several impatiently threw off the yoke which had always been irksome; others hastened to seize the helm which they had unwillingly seen in the hands of Gustavus, but which, during his lifetime, they did not dare to dispute with him.
And so to supper, with huge hard biscuit and stony cheese, and the full wine jug passed from mouth to mouth. To every man a fork and to every man his place within arm's length of the great basin mottled green and white within, red brown and unglazed on the outside. But the man at the helm has an earthen plate, and the jug is passed aft to him from time to time.
Half an hour's further experience revealed the fact that the ship was so nearly steering herself that a very slight adjustment of the helm would enable her to do so entirely, and this adjustment I was able to make with sufficient accuracy within the next twenty minutes to permit of my lashing the wheel and giving my attention to other matters.
It was rough and wet around and above, and it might come worse still. Hold! what was that? what struck there? what burst yonder? what seized the boat? It heeled, and lay on its beam ends! Was it a waterspout? Was it a heavy sea coming suddenly down? The boy at the helm cried out aloud, "Heaven help us!"
And therewith Sir Arthur rushed on him with all his might and pulled him to the earth, and then rushed off his helm, and gave him such a buffet on the head that the blood came out at his ears, his nose, and his mouth. Now will I slay thee, said Arthur. Slay me ye may well, said Accolon, an it please you, for ye are the best knight that ever I found, and I see well that God is with you.
The helm of the British vessel was then shifted, but so much ground had been lost that she could anchor only abreast the fifth French ship; the interval left being filled by those who followed.
"It's let go the anchor an' take soundin's 'll be the nixt order, I s'pose, Captain Muggins?" said Larry, touching his cap. "Or let the tother pilot take the helm," said Old Peter, "`he's all my fancy painted him, as Milton says in Paraphrases Lost." "Right, Peter," cried Will Osten, "we must dethrone Muggins and reinstate Bunco."
The sailors on watch rushed to the side of the vessel, with the cry some one gone overboard. "It is not from deck," said the man at the helm, "something has been thrown from the aft cabin." A call for the boat to be lowered was echoed from the deck. I rushed into my sister's cabin; it was empty.
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