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However, the signal was repeated, and I had to have the dhow alongside. Meanwhile the "owner" was anxious to get steerage-way, for we were not at anchor and in very ticklish soundings; so I slid off the bridge and had a sample of the grain handed up to me: it was a species of millet, looking very like pearl-barley as "milled" for culinary purposes.
The breeze that had come to us proved to be but a very languid zephyr after all, a scarcely perceptible breathing, just sufficient to give the schooner steerage-way, and to drift us along at the rate of a bare two knots, to the south-west, through the soft, mysterious sheen of the star-lit night. With the dawning of the new day matters improved somewhat, our speed rising to nearly four knots.
Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phœnician boarders were scrambling like cats upon her decks. “Swords, men!” called Themistocles, never less daunted than at the pinch, “up and feed them with iron!”
Shortly before noon they sighted and passed, within a quarter of a mile, a big battleship. She was riding head to wind, and apparently steaming ahead dead slow, or, at all events, merely at a speed sufficient to give her steerage-way.
Still, this was remarkably good work, and we ought to have been perfectly satisfied; but the little barkie had stepped out at such a rattling pace all the earlier part of the voyage, that we could not be contented with any reduction in speed. This lasted for five days, and then, about one p.m., the wind suddenly dropped altogether, and left us tumbling helplessly about without even steerage-way.
"My lads, what did I tell you? That was a shock of earthquake." With the morning the threatening aspect of the weather unexpectedly disappeared. A faint hot breeze from the land, just enough to give the ship steerage-way, offered Mr. Duncalf a chance of getting to sea. Slowly the Fortuna, with the mate himself at the wheel, half sailed, half drifted into the open ocean.
I saw the captain often anxiously looking out on the weather-side, as if for a sign of more wind; but the gentle breeze just filled our sails, and gave the craft little more than steerage-way. All hands kept whistling away most energetically for a stronger wind, but it would not come. The felucca, however, sailed very fast.
The impudence of this Manx mongrel to be corrected the pride of Madame la Duchesse to be pulled down and important state intrigue to be farthered, or baffled, as circumstances render most to my own honour and glory I wished for business but now, and I have got enough of it. But Buckingham will keep his own steerage-way through shoal and through weather."
It is probable that Pintard would not have stirred, even at this order, had not the English ships been seen, at that instant, coming round Campanella, with a leading westerly wind. The flap of canvas was audible near by, too, and turning, he saw the Michael falling off under her foresail, and already gathering steerage-way.
With the last breath of wind she was put about, and attempted to stand off shore; but she was very soon left in what is called the "doldrums," namely, without steerage-way. I had been watching her attentively. I thought from the first I knew her; and I now felt certain that she was no other than the ship of which I was in search, the Mary.
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