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Updated: May 4, 2025
We had a special target-practice that afternoon all for Antonio. As I told my crew me bein' captain of the port-bow quick-firer, though I'm a torpedo man now it just showed how you can work your gun under any discomforts. A shell twenty six-inch shells burstin' inboard couldn't 'ave begun to make the varicose collection o' tit-bits which we had spilled on our deck.
Shipping both oars he pulled madly out into the stream, but in a few moments he was swept against the port-bow of a large vessel, against the stem of which the water was curling as if the ship had been breasting the Atlantic waves before a stiff breeze. One effort Gorman made to avoid the collision, then he leaped up, and just as the boat struck, sprang at the fore-chains.
As we had determined not to be defeated, we continued beating backwards and forwards until we saw the coast of Cornwall, and the bright beams of Saint Agnes' Lighthouse appeared on our port-bow; while those from the light-vessel moored off the Seven Stones were seen on the other.
The gear was shouldered and the skipper led the way northward at a run, lantern in hand. They found the wreck about a mile north of Squid Beach, close against the face of the cliff. She had struck with her port-bow and was listed sharply landward. The seas beat so furiously upon her that every seventh comer washed her clean and sent the spray smoking over her splintered spars.
Deserted Pepworth's was on the port-bow, Gun Hill, under Lombard's Kop, on the starboard, Bulwan abeam, Middle Hill astern, Surprise Hill on the port-quarter. Every outline was cut in adamant. The Helpmakaar Ridge, with its little black ants a-crawl on their hill, was crushed flat beneath us.
For an hour I saw nothing but the naked, desolate sea. And then, where a vagrant shaft of sunlight struck the ocean and turned its surface to wrathful silver, I caught a small black speck thrust skyward for an instant and swallowed up. I waited patiently. Again the tiny point of black projected itself through the wrathful blaze a couple of points off our port-bow.
She had sailed for Buenos Ayres, but they looked for her return within the month, and we left again next day, cruising near shore as far as Desterro, where luck was with us. "I remember that morning as if it was yesterday. We had struck eight-bells, and the men were going down to dinner, when the mate sighted a ship on the port-bow.
"Here, father, here!" he shouted, but still wondering what it meant, till he heard the loud thud of approaching feet coming through the darkness, and once more there was a hail. "Where away, lad?" Mark ought to have answered, "Three points on your port-bow," but he was not well up in nautical terms in this, his first voyage, and so he simply cried out, "Here!"
"We were to open them on reaching the deserted island of Sombriero, lying in north latitude eighteen, thirty-six, west longitude sixty-three, twenty-eight. Sombriero bore four miles to the north-east from our port-bow when the gale cleared, Mr. Wharton." The lieutenant bowed stiffly. He and the captain had been bosom friends from childhood.
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