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Two hours of terrible work followed, in which all hands of us two hunters, three sailors, Wolf Larsen and I reefed, first one and then the other, the jib and mainsail. Hove to under this short canvas, our decks were comparatively free of water, while the Ghost bobbed and ducked amongst the combers like a cork.
Silently, like sea-birds glorying in the tempest, the canoes bounded from crest to crest of the rolling seas, always taking care not to be caught broadsides by the smashing combers, or swamped between waves in the churning seas. How it happened is not known, but somehow between wind and tide-rip, thirty of the canoes that rode over a billow and swept down to the trough never came up.
To satisfy this unspoken craving for action he would, from his outlook on the Jerbourg crags where bold Sir Hugh had sat for just such purpose years before watch the Weymouth luggers making bad weather of it beyond the Casquets; or challenge in his own boat the rip-tides between Sark and Brechou, and the combers that romped between St. Sampson and the Isle of Herm.
They did it cheerfully, though they knew it meant a thrash to windward along the perilous edge of the ice, and, for the sea was getting up, she flung the spray all over her forward half as she smashed the growing combers with her bows. Soon the windlass was caked with glistening ice, and long spikes of it hung from her rail, while the slippery crystals gathered thick on deck.
Many of the less expert failed to throw themselves on the crest, and slid back into smooth water, or were caught in the combers which were fully ten feet high, and after being rolled over and over, ignominiously disappeared amidst roars of laughter, and shouts from the shore.
"That's the idea," was Ben's reply. And now the storm was upon them in its full fury. The wind seemed like a wild beast filled with furious instincts and bent on the destruction of the Bolo. Half buried in the giant waves that the sudden hurricane whipped up, the little craft bravely struggled along. Bluewater Bill kept her nose pointed right into the big combers.
The wind was with the tide, and in a following lump of a sea, without combers and with a rising glass, we valorously set out, and, missing the South Pier by four inches, we occupied the deep. For one short half-hour things went more or less well. I noted a white horse or two to windward, but my companion said it was only the sea breaking over the outer sands.
"I don't believe in bein' sarcastic when people are tryin' to do the best they can," objected Hiram. He noted that the Dobson was once again setting straight out to sea. She was butting her snub nose furiously into swelling combers. The slaty bench of clouds had lifted into the zenith. Scud trailed just over the swaying masts. The shore line was lost in haze.
"The signory, assembling, asked our wishes. We named a committee of four to confer with them. They demanded new judges, and three new companies of the arts who should have representation in the signory, one for the wool combers and dyers; one for the barbers and tailors, and a third for the lowest class of the people, that is, the unskilled laborers.
"I do not mean that it is not very natural she should be devoted to her son," he said with a tremendous air. What he did mean was therefore uncertain, and again he changed the subject. "There is a third thing," he said. "This concerns you. You are of the age when we Combers usually marry. I should wish you to marry, Michael.
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