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"What is it?" called out the steersman, who happened to be the master of the schooner himself. He noticed no sign of breakers anywhere near and wondered at this sudden alteration of the vessel's course "Where's the reef?" "'Tain't no reef, sir," sang out the man aloft in answer, "but I see something like a man in the water." "Man be hanged!" exclaimed the schooner's skipper in a rage.
Then the Danes saw us, and those on the fore deck shouted, and the oars plashed wildly, and many on the side next to us stopped altogether; and at the same time the steersman saw the stem of the wreck, and, as I think, lost his head between fear of it and the sudden appearance of the foe whom he thought he had escaped. The larboard oars were going yet, and the starboard had almost stopped.
But who comma dere, Massa?" said he, pointing to a boat that was rapidly approaching the spot where we stood. The steersman, who appeared to be the skipper of a vessel, inquired for Cutler, and gave him a letter, who said as soon as he had read it, "Slick, our cruise has come to a sudden termination.
The double-runner is much lighter and very much easier to steer on account of the front sled being arranged so that it can be moved independently of the rear sled, for a turn to the right or the left causes the "bob" to take the direction indicated by the front runners; but double-runners steered with a wheel, lever or yoke in front, are very dangerous, as the steersman, in case of an accident, is thrown against the steering apparatus, usually with serious results.
"Well, well!" Tunis broke in sharply. "Just keep your mind on what you are doing now, Horry. You're supposed to be steering the Seamew into Big Wreck Cove. Don't undertake to shave a piece off the Lighthouse Point reef." The steersman did not answer. From long experience with these Lathams, Horace Newbegin knew just how much interference or advice they would stand.
Fortunately, there was no great loss from this accident, which was caused by the clumsiness and timidity of the steersman, Chaboneau. Captain Lewis's account of the incident records that the conduct of Chaboneau's wife, Sacajawea, was better than that of her cowardly husband. He says:
He and the 'steersman' then carry her over the portage, while the rest carry the cargo on their backs. A man's own weight is a fair load; but with a sling across their foreheads, and clasped hands behind their heads, strong men have carried twice as much and more.
"Dive thirty, sir," repeated the steersman below, and with a slight twist of his gear the horizontal rudders turned and the submarine inclined downward; the level-indicator showed a slight slant and the depth-gauge hand turned slowly round twenty-two, twenty-five, twenty-eight, then thirty feet, when the helmsman turned his wheel back a little and the vessel forged ahead on a level keel.
They were four in number, and were named as follows:-Joseph Monkman, cook and interpreter; William Prince, full Indian; Thomas Smith, ditto; Thomas Hope, ci-devant schoolmaster, and now self-constituted steersman. The three first were good men. Prince, in particular, was a splendid canoe-man in dangerous water. But Hope possessed the greatest capacity for eating and talking of any man I ever met.
t the first glance, the steersman knew that the doom of all on board was fixed, for the bay was one of those which are surrounded by almost perpendicular cliffs; and although, during calm weather, there was a small space between the cliffs and the sea, which might be termed a beach, yet during a storm the waves lashed with terrific fury against the rocks, so that no human being might land there.