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Then up came the little steamer, rolling and pitching heavily upon the long ground swell, sweeping round in a long curve that brought her all but alongside the wallowing ship; a brief interchange of hails between her bridge and the Concordia's poop, the sudden snaking out of a whirling heaving-line from the forecastle of the latter, followed by the thin but tremendously strong steel towing hawser; and as the few remaining sheets of the ship's canvas shrivelled in to the masts and yards the tug passed ahead, the towrope rose dripping out of the water, tautened to the semblance of a metal rod, and away went the two craft, heading for the middle of the space of water that divided the two breakwaters.
But full compensation came to the disappointed ones when, awakened on the following morning about six o'clock by the voice of the mate issuing certain sharp orders from the poop, followed by the flinging down of ropes upon the deck and the cheery "yo ho's" of the sailors, as they threw their weight upon various portions of the ship's running gear, the said disappointed ones leaped from their bunks and hastened out on deck clad only in pyjamas and overcoats; for they found the ship hove-to on the starboard tack with her head to the eastward, while stretching away astern of them, from the starboard to the port quarter, was the dominating eminence of the Bluff, bush-clad from base to crest, crowned with its lighthouse and signal staff from the latter of which was fluttering the answering pennant, acknowledging the deciphering of the Concordia's number with the long breakwater jutting out into the sea from its foot, while, nearer at hand, there stretched across the scene the low outline of the Point, also bush-crowned, with the roofs of a few houses and a flagstaff or two showing above the verdure, the sandy beach, with the eternal surf thundering upon it in long lines of rainbow spray, reaching for mile after mile athwart the ship's stern, and for background the far-stretching ridge of the bush-clad, villa-studded range of the Berea, the windows of its houses already ablaze with the ardent beams of the newly risen sun.
Many lads in Dick Maitland's position, and brought up amid refined surroundings, as he had been, would have regarded with horror and loathing such a situation as that in which he now found himself, and would have been overwhelmed with self-pity at the cruelly hard luck which forced them to herd with such uncongenial companions in such a pig sty of a place as the Concordia's forecastle just then presented; but Dick was something of a philosopher, and was, moreover, full of "grit". He held the doctrine that a man can make what he chooses of his surroundings, and always find in them something of amusement or interest, if he cares to look for it; and now he consoled himself with the reminder that life in that forecastle, and among those men, whose highest ideal of happiness seemed to be helpless intoxication, would after all be but a brief experience, out of which it would be hard indeed if he could not learn some useful lesson.
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