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Sharp winds and rough seas had to be faced, and when these were contrary it required no small strength to pull their heavy boats against them hour after hour, and mile after mile, to say nothing of the management of the cumbrous steering-oar, twenty-seven feet in length, to handle which the steersman had to stand upright in the stern sheets.
The first struck fifty feet to windward of the boat, the second alongside; and at the third the boat-steerer let loose his steering-oar and crumpled up in the bottom of the boat. "I guess that'll fix them," Wolf Larsen said, rising to his feet. "I couldn't afford to let the hunter have it, and there is a chance the boat-puller doesn't know how to steer.
During the two hours which the sailor had remained at the steering-oar, and for some time after, no incident occurred to interrupt the tranquillity of the Catamaran's crew. A very odd sort of fish, swimming about a cable's length ahead of the craft, had attracted the attention of William and the girl, exciting their curiosity so much as to cause them to rise to their feet and stand watching it.
He had obeyed the first instructions shouted to him by Ben Brace, and taken to the steering-oar; but, after struggling for some time to get the craft round, and seeing that his efforts were of no avail, he dropped it to comply with the still later orders given by the sailor: to let loose the halliards and lower the sail.
As soon as Andrew's skiff, the "Grisilde," was brought back and the ruffians had gone off up the ravine, Andrew left Mrs. Wehle sitting by the fire in the loom-room of the castle, while he crossed the river to look after Gottlieb. Little Wilhelmina insisted on going with him, and as she handled a steering-oar well he took her along.
Hawsepipe had rigged steering-gear to the raft by lashing a piece of deck-plank, some twelve feet long, to the schooner's foremast in such a way that half of it was immersed in the water and acted as a rudder, while the other half slanted in over the raft and served as a tiller; it was, in fact, a rude substitute for a steering-oar.
They make one steering-oar for it, which is passed through the bottom of the boat; and they have a mast of acacia and sails of papyrus.
What took them possibly two minutes took me twenty, but in the end I succeeded in setting and trimming it, and with the steering-oar in my hands hauled on the wind. "There lies Japan," I remarked, "straight before us." "Humphrey Van Weyden," she said, "you are a brave man." "Nay," I answered, "it is you who are a brave woman."
I have my finger in the hole the bullet made below the water-line. I can hold on till we have passed through Thorn." He spoke in his natural voice, quite cheerfully. They were not out of danger yet. Kosmaroff could not quit the steering-oar. He glanced at Martin, and then looked ahead again uneasily. Martin was the first to speak.
As he gave utterance to these words of warnings the boy sprang towards his companion, with arms outstretched, to protect her. The action came too late. The steering-oar, held in the hands of the sleeper, hung suspended high above the water.
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