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Lower the sail let it flap idly on the wind helm a-port and so to smoother waters: return to common life and humbler thoughts. It may yet go hard with Roger Acton. Jennings is a man of character, especially the farther from his home; the county round take him for a model of propriety, a sample of the strictest conduct.
"Quarter-master," continued Reud, "did you port the helm? Now, mind what you say; did you, sir? because if you did not; six dozen." "We did, sir hard a-port." "And the ship immediately after struck?" "Yes, sir." "Pooh! the case is clear we need not talk about it any longer. A clear case, Mr Farmer.
Still on they flew; a vast surge came rolling up, lifting the stern of the boat, and Tom, for an instant, thought that she would broach to; but with all his might putting the helm hard a-port, she went rushing on before it. The foaming, roaring breakers were leaping up on either hand. He had lost sight of Green's boat. Could she have met with the fate he had expected to overtake his boat?
"Lundy!" said Yeo. "The south end! I see the head of the Shutter in the breakers! Hard a-port yet, and get her close-hauled as you can, and the Lord may have mercy on us still! Look at the Spaniard!" Yes, look at the Spaniard! On their left hand, as they broached-to, the wall of granite sloped down from the clouds toward an isolated peak of rock, some two hundred feet in height.
It was fine weather wi' a kind o' haar. All at once, my ship gaed six points aff her coorse, frae S. E. to E. N. E., and I jaloused that the nets had been fouled by some muckle movin' body. I gave orders to pit the wheel hard a-port, but she wouldna answer. Suddenly the strain on the nets stoppit. "I needna tell you what had happened.
"Port! hard a-port, for your life! Over with the wheel, for God's sake!" His cry was broken in upon by a mad jangling of engine-room bells accompanied by a perfect babel of excited shouts evidently in some foreign tongue on board the stranger, mingled with equally excited shouts and the sudden trampling of feet forward, and loud-voiced commands from Captain Rainhill on the poop.
"Hard a-port!" called out the steersman. There, just ahead, was a great white-capped "roller" coming coming, the biggest wave they had encountered since leaving open sea. But MacCann, the steersman, swung the boat straight into the crested roller, and the Tulare took it gamely, "bow on."
An hour later the Farallone was under all plain sail, the rudder hard a-port, and the cheerfully-clanking windlass had brought the anchor home. "All clear, sir," cried Herrick from the bow. The captain met her with the wheel, as she bounded like a stag from her repose, trembling and bending to the puffs.
These frequent and often contradictory orders were necessary, when, owing to some unexpected bend in the river, the Silver Queen would luff up suddenly and shoot her head athwart stream hard a-port, or else try to "take the bit between her teeth," and sheer into the shore on the starboard hand as if she wanted to run up high and dry on the mud, loth to leave her native land.
Now we opened a tremendous fire on them, every gun telling. Then the helm was put a-port, the after-yards braced up, and again we were after them. "Again and again we practised the same manoeuvre, never allowing the `Ca Ira' to get a shot at us with one of her broadside guns.
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