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Through the aperture he had made, Christy looked with intense interest to ascertain the effect of this shot. As soon as the smoke blew away, he saw that the shot had passed obliquely into the boat, striking the stern-board just behind Major Pierson, and splitting off the plank near the water-line.
Could the little line stand the strain? That was the question. It was so tight that it vibrated like thin wire, and it was humming musically, monotonously. It held the boat was moving! But the lumber was moving too. On it came. Ten feet a plank wrenched clear of the mass and shot on ahead, ramming out the lifeboat's stern-board, above the water line.
La Salle's boat was a flat-bottomed "sculling-float," twelve feet long by three feet beam, and ten inches deep, with a hole through the stern-board, through which, with a short, crooked oar, a man could silently propel himself within shot of a flock of fowl. Davies's boat aimed at the same end in another way, being a large side-wheel paddle-boat, propelled by cranks, for two persons.
The order came too soon; the topsails set flat aback; the ship was in irons. Even yet, had the helm been reversed, they might have saved her. But to think of a stern-board at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were foreign to the schooner-sailor's mind.
In a short time, however, the wind shifted and caught the sail aback. The schooner seemed about to make a stern-board. Before the order could be given to let go the sheets, a loud thundering noise was heard like the report of a piece of ordnance, and the sail, blown from the bolt-ropes, flew away before the blast.
I found a few reins and straps in one of the lockers, so I made shoulder-straps of them, and buckled my package to my shoulders. Just as I replaced its stopper, we swept into the jobble; the lugger filled on one tack, and lay over, and the spray of a wave came over us. Then we righted suddenly, came up into the wind with our sails slatting, and made a stern-board.
There came an hour in which she did not rise to the waves as she had been doing, an hour when the leak gained terribly, and when the Fledgling, struggling bravely, if wearily, upward to meet a wave, would stop half-way with a jerk and a sigh, the wave gouging along the deck breaking over the stern-board. They could feel her going in the pilot-house.
Presently she righted, and then made a stern-board, and came so close to us that one of the hands not only heard our cries but saw us in the water. In an instant the captain called to us to cheer up, and said a boat was coming. 'The ship struck some wreckage, and is making water, he added. We were taken aboard in two trips, the poor, broken-legged sailor suffering terribly.
Her head turned a few points to the eastward she made a stern-board the water rushed in torrents up her decks and into her hold the foam flew wildly over her side, and shrieks, and cries, and oaths, extorted by the agony of despair, escaped from her maddened crew, as they beheld their inevitable doom.
The ship trembled from stem to stern, and it appeared as if the masts were going by the board. Orders were instantly given to brace round the yards, so as to box the ship off. In so doing she made a stern-board, and drove rapidly in towards the berg. The sound of the first shock had brought all hands on deck.
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