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By the increasing light the smack's crew were not only enabled to note the exact position of the wreck, but they could also see that a considerable number of people were clustered upon the poop of the half-submerged hull, some of them being women and children.
Her boat danced on the waves like a cork, pitching heavily from side to side, with now the stern and now the bow pointing to the sky; at one moment leaping with its gunwale above the level of the smack's bulwarks; at the next moment eight or ten feet down in the trough of the waves; never at rest for an instant, always tugging madly at its tether, and often surging against the vessel's side, from actual contact with which it was protected by strong rope fenders.
As the veteran Bill, standing there at the tiller exposed to the full fury of the tempest, with the tiller-ropes pulling and jerking at his hands until they threatened to cut into the bone, felt his wet clothing clinging to his skin, and his sea-boots gradually filling with water, he pictured to himself a group of poor terror-stricken wretches clinging despairingly to a shattered wreck out there upon the cruel sands, with the merciless sea tugging at them fiercely, and the wind chilling the blood within their veins until, perchance, their benumbed limbs growing powerless, their hold would relax and they would be swept away; and as the dismal scene rose before his mental vision he tautened up the tiller-ropes a trifle, the smack's head fell off perhaps half a point, and the wind striking more fully upon the straining canvas, she went surging out to seaward like a startled steed, her hull half buried in a whirling chaos of flying foam.
I have fifty-two boxes of soles to put aboard the fish-cutter in the morning, and I'm not going to lose lives before I do that! This smack's mine!" Captain Weeks was transformed into a savage animal fighting for his own. All night he and the mate stood on the deck and plunged down the open companion with a torrent of water to hurry them.
There were flecks of white cloud in the sky, flecks of white breakers on the sea, and it was all most dreary. He stood at the end of the jetty, and his great possibility came out of the grey to him. Weeks was shorthanded. Cribbed within a few feet of the smack's deck, there would be no chance for any man to shirk. Duncan acted on the impulse.
It was Bob's head. "There he is!" was the exultant exclamation of every one of the smack's crew, and then they sent forth upon the wings of the gale a ringing cheer, in which those upon the wreck faintly joined. "Now, boys," exclaimed old Bill, "clear away this here line behind me, some of yer; and look out another nice light handy one to bend on to it in case we wants it."
One hundred and thirty pounds this smack's mine, every rope on her. I tell you what, Duncan: you've done me a good turn to-day, and I'll do you another. I'll land you at Helsund, in Denmark, and you can get clear away. All we can do now is to lie out this gale." Before the afternoon the air was dark with a swither of foam and spray blown off the waves in the thickness of a fog.
Then, after the little meeting is over, and the evening begins to fall, the fascinating landsman will stroll on the deck for a few minutes, until the smack's boats come over the great seas to bear away the visitors; all his gossip is like a revelation to the rude, good-hearted creatures, and his words filter from vessel to vessel; his very accent and tone are remembered; and when the hoarse salute "God bless you!" sounds over the sea, as the boats go away, you may be sure that the fishers utter their blessing with sincere fervour.
Bob and two or three others of the smack's crew also went below and busied themselves in lighting a fire, routing out such blankets and wraps of various kinds as happened to be on board, and in other ways doing what they could to ameliorate the deplorable condition of their guests.
The captain, who had been led to expect something of importance from the smack's behaviour, in high dudgeon at finding that so much bustle and waste of time was only to burden him with a mere castaway seeking a passage home one who, albeit a countryman, was too ragged and disreputable in looks to be trusted in his assurances of reward granted him indeed the hospitality of his ship, but on the condition of his becoming a hand in the company during the forthcoming expedition.
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