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First the two chaps you described, and about five minutes after, LeBlanc and Green breezed by, not letting any grass grow under their feet. I've marked the spot well, and have located a good trail all the way, using private signs of our own that would be meaningless even to a woodsman familiar with all trail markings and signs.
A couple of months earlier we might have been in for a cyclone, but it's "October all over" in those waters, as you know better than I. It was just going to blow, and then it was going to rain, that was all; and we had plenty of time to make everything snug before it breezed up much. It blew harder after sunset, and by the time it was quite dark it was a full gale.
The curious instinct of watchfulness even in slumber that is so quickly developed in sailors and others who are constantly exposed to danger was now fully aroused, and although I slept, my senses and faculties were so far on the alert that when, somewhat later, the wind suddenly breezed up in a spiteful squall, I heard the moan of it before it reached the brig, and was broad awake and on my feet in time to put the helm up and keep broad away before it.
As the sun went down the wind manifested a disposition to drop; and for a couple of hours we crept along at a speed of scarcely five knots; but it breezed up again just after the first watch came on deck; and by two bells we were smoking through it faster than I had ever before seen the craft travel.
The sun disappeared beneath the horizon in a heavy squall of rain, the wind breezed up fiercely, and it was piercingly cold.
We capered blithely out to the machine, climbed in and hiked for the blind tiger. After the usual red tape the captain sold us about two quarts of jig-juice the kind that makes a jack-rabbit spit in a bulldog's eye. "Anon, we again went for a ride, and I am here to state that the way we breezed through that village made the proverbial Kansas cyclone look as if it was running on crutches.
If there was any job aloft that needed two hands, they were always the first to jump into the rigging; but that doesn't often happen on a fore-and-aft schooner. If it breezed up, and the jibtopsail was to be taken in, they never minded a wetting, and they would be out at the bowsprit end before there was a hand at the downhaul.
It breezed up that night, and as the Burdock cleared the tail of Cornwall, the heavy Atlantic water came aboard. She was a sound ship, though, and Captain Price knew her as he knew the palms of his hands. Screened behind the high weather-cloths, he drove her into it, while the tall seas filled her forward main deck rail-deep and her bows pounded away in a mast-high smother of spray.
He had a slight swagger, balanced by a certain benignancy. He was automatically the leader of the Bunch, held most likely to succeed in their aims. "Hi, gang," he breezed. "Otto is bringing beer, Pepsi and sandwiches from his joint across the street. Special day so it's on me. Time to relax maybe unsnarl. Any new problems?" "Still plenty of old ones," Frank Nelsen commented laconically.
Afore I got the leather sewed on I be to look out for myself, 'cause they was goin' to clew up the sail, and from that time on it breezed on from the sou'ard, keepin' us constantly takin' the sail off of her, till at four bells we was under double-reefed topsails and reefed courses, with jib, crochick, and spanker stowed.
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