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It was hard work, equal to heaving an anchor against a strong head wind and ten-knot tideway, and only half the crew could find room on the windlass-brakes; so, while the first shift labored and swore and encouraged one another, the rest watched the approach of a small tug towing a couple of scows, which seemed to have arisen out of the sea ahead of them.
The loss, however, seemed to affect the ship's speed but little, for she scudded off under bare poles at as great a rate as if she had all her canvas set, and was running before a ten-knot breeze. "Thank Heaven!" I heard Captain Billings exclaim in a low voice, taking off his cap reverently, as soon as we were safely round before the wind; and I could see his lips move as if in silent prayer.
There was no time for much amusement of this sort. Yards were braced to port, for the ship was careering down toward the steamer at a ten-knot rate; and soon black dots on her rail resolved into passengers waving hats and handkerchiefs, and black dots on the boat deck resolved into sailors standing by the end of a hawser which led up from the bitts below on the fantail.
No sooner had the moorings been cast loose from than Eph sounded the slow speed ahead bell. Within sixty seconds the propellers of the “Farnum” were doing a ten-knot stunt, which was soon increased to fourteen. One of the seamen now stood by to swing the searchlight under Eph’s orders.
A down grade in the Shell Road, where it dipped toward the shore, helped things along. Barnacles tightened the traces, the sprit-sail did its share, and in an amazingly short time the odd vehicle was spinning toward Sculpin Point at a ten-knot gait. Desperately Mrs. Bean gripped the gunwale and lustily she screamed: "Whoa, whoa! Stop him, Captain, stop him! He'll smash us all to pieces!"
"Ay, ay, sir, they see us, and mean to hit us too; but we are running across their fire, and that with a ten-knot breeze; but, when we heave in stays, and get in a line with their guns, we shall see, and it may be feel, more of their work than we do now; a thirty-two an't trained as easily as a fowling-piece or a ducking-gun."
Three miles before her, with all sails set, including staysail and balloon-job, raced a fishing schooner. There was a fresh ten-knot wind blowing a little south of west a wind that favored the schooner, and she was putting her best foot forward, taking the green water over her bows in a smother of foam. "Heavens! look at her go!" The exclamation was one of pure delight in the speed.
A man that trusts to impulse and emotion to further his Christian course, is like a ship in that belt of variable winds that lies near the Equator, where there will be a fine ten-knot breeze for an hour or two, and then a sickly, stagnating calm. Push further south, and get into the steady 'trades, where the wind blows with equable and persistent force all the year round in the same direction.
It was near midnight when they crawled into their beds to drop into a ten-knot sleep, and they slept so soundly than none of them awoke until they were aroused by the sun shining upon the tent the next morning. Breakfast was prepared and eaten leisurely. There was no hurry.
This morning the gale had diminished to a mere ten-knot breeze, and the sea had gone down with it so considerably that we were able to keep ourselves dry upon the deck. To our great grief, however, we found that two jars of our olives, as well as the whole of our ham, had been washed overboard, in spite of the careful manner in which they had been fastened.
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