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Our towrope had chafed through, and we were in a difficulty, attempting to pass a bad rapid among the rocks, when a large junk was hauled bodily past us, and, seeing our plight, hooked on to us and towed us with them out of danger. From two hundred to three hundred feet high, and sixty feet wide at the base, it is a detached rock, cleft vertically from a former cliff.
Bunny and Sue could easily understand what this meant, and they were not frightened, even though the automobile swayed about from side to side and bumped as a boat does when it goes over the bottom in shallow water. Uncle Tad got the towrope out from a box, or locker, as Mr. Brown called it.
Then my men laughed heartily. How it was done I do not know, but I felt keen admiration for the calm dexterity with which it had been done. We baled the water out of the boat, paid out a second towrope this one from the bow to keep the stern under control, the other being made fast to the mast, and took on board a licensed pilot.
At length the order was given to unmoor ship, the dock gates swung open, the vessel was warped through the opening to where the tug awaited her, the towrope was passed, and presently the Concordia was heading down the river toward Gravesend, from whence, having first shipped her passengers, she was to take her final departure for the southern hemisphere.
Well, this boat a leaky, heavy, old tub that had to be tracked nearly all the way carried me the forty miles to Suifu within contract time. The boatmen on board worked sixteen hours without any rest except at two hasty meals; the frayed towrope never parted at any rapid, and only once did our boat get entangled with any other.
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.
From Madeira to England we had fair winds and fine weather, crossing the Bay of Biscay, which had given us so much trouble going out, with all our kites flying and the wind well in the quarter, which made all the old hands say that the "Portsmouth girls had got hold of our towrope."
"Thank you, I don't want to sit there, and if I can't do as I like I shall get into the birchbark and paddle you up river on a towrope, which will jerk you horribly, and probably capsize me," said Jervis, with an obstinate air. "What do you wish to do?" she asked demurely. "I wish to sit where you are sitting now," he answered.
The afternoon was well advanced when at length the passengers, seventeen in number, came off to the ship; and the moment that they and their baggage were embarked the anchor was hove up, the tug once more came alongside and took the towrope, and the Concordia proceeded upon her voyage, the hope being freely expressed, both fore and aft, that there would be no more anchoring until the ship should have arrived under the shadow, so to speak, of Natal Bluff.
Mortimer turned and saw the boat glide by the bank like a shadow; heard the thud of Old Jubilee's hoofs, and sprang in pursuit. The woman ran with him. But the freshest horse cannot bolt far with a 72-feet monkey-boat dragging on his shoulders, and at the end of fifty yards, the towrope holding, Old Jubilee dropped to a jog-trot. The woman caught her breath as Mr.
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