Chapter XIII: Stormy Weather

“Too bad we couldn’t take Carleton along with us,” said Harvey, as the yacht _Viking_, with all sail spread, was beating down the bay. “He ought to have asked us sooner. We might have managed to make room for him.”

“You mean, he ought to have said he was going sooner,” said Henry Burns, slyly.

“Oh, I suppose so,” replied Harvey, half-impatiently. “I see, you never will quite like our new friend. By the way, that reminds me, he wants to buy the _Viking_. He says he will give us eighteen hundred dollars. That’s the second offer we’ve had this summer.”

“Are you sure it isn’t the same one?” suggested Henry Burns.

“Why, of course it is,” cried Jack Harvey. “Sure enough, that’s what Harry Brackett was up to. He was buying for Mr. Carleton—just trying to show off, and make us think he had all that money.”

“That’s queer, too,” remarked Henry Burns, “that Mr. Carleton should try to buy the _Viking_ after just that one short sail down the river.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Harvey; “he saw what the boat could do—at least, in smooth water. No, that wouldn’t quite answer, either. He must have heard about her from some of the fishermen over at Bellport.”

“Well, do you want to sell?” inquired Henry Burns.

“Not much!” replied Harvey, emphatically. “I know you don’t, either, although you don’t say so.”

“Well, that’s true; I’d rather not,” admitted Henry Burns.

The wind was light, and they had only reached Hawk Island by six o’clock. So, not caring to risk another experience making Loon Island Harbour in the night, they anchored, and sailed over the next morning. They had provided bait for two days’ fishing before they left Southport, so they stood on past Loon Island Harbour and ran out direct to the fishing-grounds.

They had a fair afternoon’s fishing, and also set two short pieces of trawl, for hake, a few fathoms off from one of the reefs. Captain Sam had provided them with these. They were long lines, each with about a hundred hooks attached at intervals by short pieces of line. At either end of the trawl-line was a sinker, and also a line extending to the surface of the water where it was attached to a buoy. This, floating conspicuously on the water, would mark the spot where the trawl had been set.

Baiting these many hooks all along the trawl with herring, bought for the purpose at Southport, they set them at a point lying between two reefs, in about twenty-five fathoms of water, where Will Hackett had informed them there was a strip of soft, muddy bottom, a feeding-ground frequented by these fish.

Then they ran in to harbour with their catch of cod, and took them up to the trader’s wharf.

“We’re going to have some hake for you, too,” said Henry Burns. “That is, we expect to. What are you paying for hake these days?”

The trader, Mr. Hollis, eyed the young fisherman with an amused expression.

“Going right into the business, aren’t you?” he said. “Well, I like to see you young fellows with some spunk. Don’t fetch in so many that I can’t handle ’em,” he added, with a twinkle in his eye; “and if you underrun your trawls twice a day, so the fish will come in here good and fresh, I’ll pay you half a cent a pound. You’ll find it some work, though, when the sea is running strong. Got to take the fish off the hooks in the morning, and then underrun again at evening and bait up all the hooks for the night’s catch.”

“We’ll do that all right,” responded Henry Burns. “We’ll bring them in fresh.”

They put in hard, busy days now, rising at the first of daylight and going outside as soon as the wind would allow. They had only one dory with which to tend the trawls, so two of the boys usually tended one, and then the other two took their turn. It proved, indeed, hard work when the sea was high.

If the night’s catch had been good, the trawls came up heavy; and there was ever the danger, with the pitching of the boat, of running one of the innumerable hooks into the hands. But they soon became expert at it, learning how to sit braced in the boat and hold the trawl with a firm grasp, so that it might not slip through the hands, and how to unhook the fish.

Then, when they had underrun both trawls, they would stand off in the _Viking_ for a different feeding-ground for the cod, and fish until it was time to bait up the trawls for the night.

By degrees, they came to learn other feeding-grounds than the few Will Hackett had shown them, by following the little fleet; and they went now, occasionally, clear across the bay that lay between Loon Island and South Haven Island. This was often rough water, for they were at the very entrance to the bay, at the open sea, and the waves piled in heavily, even when the wind was light, showing there had been a disturbance far out. This took them to the shoal water in about the reefs at the foot of South Haven Island, a protected spot from the north, under the lee, but open to the full sweep of the sea from the south.

It was in this place at about five of the afternoon, on the fourth day following their arrival, that they experienced a sudden and startling change of weather.

They had gone out in the morning, with a light southerly breeze blowing, which had held steadily throughout the day. But now, near sundown, it had died away, so that they had weighed anchor and were about to beat back slowly across the bay, toward harbour.

They had scarcely got under way, however, when the wind, with extraordinary fickleness, fell off altogether, a strange and unusual calm succeeding.

“That’s queer!” exclaimed Harvey, glancing about with some apprehension. “Looks as though we were hung up here for the night. It won’t do to try to anchor near these reefs, and we can’t fetch bottom where we are. I guess we are in for a row of a mile to get under the lee of one of those little islands where we can lie safe.”

They were about half a mile out from the nearest line of reefs, floating idly on the long swells, with the sails flapping and the boom swinging inboard in annoying fashion.

Henry Burns groaned.

“Oh my!” he exclaimed. “What a beastly stroke of luck. I’m tired enough to turn in now. Don’t you suppose we’ll get a little evening breeze?”

“We may,” replied Harvey, “but there’s something queer in the way the wind dropped all of a sudden. I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of the breeze for to-day.”

But Jack Harvey’s prophecy was refuted with startling suddenness.

“Jack,” said Bob, almost the next moment, “there’s something queer about the water just along the line of the reefs and the shore back of them.”

He pointed, as he spoke, to a strange, white light that lay in a long, thin line just off the land, a half-mile ahead. It was almost ghostly, with a brilliant, unnatural whiteness. And, even as they gazed, its area rapidly extended and broadened.

Harvey shot a quick glance ahead. Then he sprang from the wheel and seized the throat-halyard.

“Get the peak—quick!” he cried to Bob. “Head her square as you can for the light, Henry. Tom, cast off the jib-halyards and grab the downhaul. It’s a white squall, I think.”

Henry Burns seized the wheel, while the two boys at the halyards let the mainsail go on the run. There was no steerageway on the _Viking_, as they had been drifting; but Henry Burns managed, by throwing the wheel over quickly and reversing it moderately, to swing the boat’s head a little.

They were not a moment too soon. Out of a clear, cloudless sky, there came suddenly rushing upon them a wind with such fury that, sweeping across the bow, it laid the yacht over; while there flew aboard, from the smother about the bow, a cloud of fine spray that nearly blinded them.

The _Viking_, its head thrown off by the squall, that struck the outer jib, which they had not been able to lower, careened alarmingly. Then Henry Burns brought her fairly before it, just as a sea began to roll aboard. The cockpit was ankle-deep with water; but they were scudding now safely out to sea, drenched to the skin, as the squall, whipping off the tops of the long rollers, filled all the air with a flying storm of spray.

The blast had fallen upon them so unexpectedly, and with such incredible quickness, that they scarce knew what had happened before they were running before it toward the open sea.

They got the hatches closed now, after Tom had dashed below and brought up the oilskins. True, they were soaked through and through, but the wind had a sharp, cold sting to it, and the oilskins would protect them from that. They got the outer jib down, too. Then, when they saw there was no immediate danger, as the _Viking_ was acting well, they collected their wits and discussed, hurriedly, what they should do.

“My! but that was a close call,” said Bob. “How did you know what was coming, Jack?”

“I didn’t, exactly,” said Harvey. “But I’ve heard the fishermen tell of the white squalls, and I thought that was one.”

“Don’t they say they are worse when they come between tides?” asked Henry Burns, quietly.

“Seems to me they do,” answered Harvey. “I guess we’re in for it. Lucky we are running out to sea, instead of in on to a lee shore, though.”

“They don’t last long, I’ve heard say,” said Henry Burns. “We may be able to face it by and by, and work back; though it will be a long beat, by the way we are driving.”

They were, indeed, being borne onward with great force. Moreover, a quick transformation had taken place over the surface of the waters; for the fury of the squall, continuing as it did for some time from the west, had calmed the waves, and there was almost a smooth sea before them.

Then, presently, there came another strange alteration of the wind. The violence of the squall abated, and the breeze fell away again. But only for a brief length of time. As often happens, with the white squall as its forerunner, the wind now changed from the southerly of the morning and afternoon, to northeasterly; and already, as they proceeded to get sail again on the _Viking_, the water darkened away to the north and eastward, showing that a new breeze was coming from that quarter. They were fully two miles out to sea.

“Looks downright nasty, don’t it, Jack?” said Henry Burns. “Better reef, hadn’t we?”

“Yes, and in a hurry, too,” replied Harvey. “It’s coming heavy before long.”

“Here, you take the wheel,” said Henry Burns. “I’m quick at tying in reef-points. Come on, Tom. Bob will set the forestaysail. How many reefs do you want, Jack?”

“Two, I think,” replied Harvey. “We’ll watch her close, though. I’m afraid we shall need a third. But we’ll work her back as far as we can before we tie another. It’s growing dark, and we must make time.”

It was true, and ominously so. With the alteration of the wind the sky had darkened, and was becoming overcast. Night would soon be upon them, and a stormy one.

Nor had they beaten back more than a half-mile, in the teeth of the wind, before Harvey luffed and hauled the main-sheet in flat.

“We’ve got to put in a third reef,” he said, soberly. “We don’t need it quite yet, but we shall very soon, and we don’t want to have to reef out here in the night.”

They lowered the sail a little and tied in the reef, and the _Viking_ stood on again. But already the sea was beginning to roll up heavily from the northeast, having a long sweep of water to become agitated in—the stretch of bay that lay between Loon and South Haven Islands. The wind had become a storm, a black, heavy nor’easter. In another half-hour, rain began to drive upon them.

But the good yacht _Viking_ stood it well, and they had worked up to within about half a mile of the foot of Loon Island, though still a mile away from it out in the bay, when the wind and sea perceptibly increased.

“We can’t make the harbour,” muttered Harvey. “We’ll try for the little harbour at the head of the island.”

The inhabitants of Loon Island called that end the head which fronted seaward, and there was a good harbour there; that is, not what the fishermen called a “whole” harbour, protected on all quarters, but good as the wind now blew. They headed more to the eastward and stood up for that.

But when, at length, Harvey peered ahead, straining his eyes in the gathering darkness for a favourable moment to come about, he could see no apparent difference in the seas. They were all huge, and they beat over the bows of the _Viking_ in one steady, dashing spray.

“She won’t do it,” said Harvey.

But he eased her and headed off, while the _Viking_ rolled dangerously. Then he put the helm hard down.

“Ready, about,” he cried.

But his fears were realized. The seas were too heavy, with the sail that they could carry.

“Well, we’ll wear her about,” said Harvey. “Drop the peak, Henry; and climb to windward, boys, when the boom comes over.”

There was peril in this manœuvre, jibing a boat in such a sea and wind; but it was clearly the only thing to be done. There was scant sail on, with the peak lowered; and Harvey did the trick pluckily and sailor-fashion. The sheet was well in and the boat almost dead before the wind, before he threw the wheel over and let the wind catch the sail on the other side. The yacht came around against a flying wall of foam and spray, with the boys clinging for one moment to the weather rail, and throwing all their weight on that side. Then Tom and Henry Burns, with united strength, raised the peak of the sail, though it filled in the gale and was almost too much for them.

They stood up again toward harbour.

“What do you think, Jack?” asked Henry Burns, finally.

“I don’t think—I know!” exclaimed Harvey, doggedly. “We can’t make the harbour. We’ve got to ride it out somehow. I don’t know but what the best thing, after all, is to leave just a scrap of sail on, to steady her, and ran to sea again. We’ve got to decide pretty soon, though.”

“Wait a minute,” said Henry Burns, quietly. “I’ve got a scheme. If it doesn’t work, we’ll scud for our lives again.”

Making a quick dash into the cabin, he emerged with a spare line, a heavy anchor-rope. Then he made a second trip and brought forth some smaller and shorter pieces.

“Get the sweeps and the boat-hook,” he cried to Tom and Bob, “and fetch up that water-cask and the big wooden fish-box.”

The boys waited not a moment to inquire the reason, though Henry Burns’s design was an enigma to them. They scrambled forward and then below, handed the sweeps aft, and tumbled the box and cask out on deck.

“Pass some lashings around the cask and the box,” commanded Henry Burns.

The boys lost no time in obeying orders, while Henry Burns, himself, quickly took a hitch around either end of one of the sweeps, with one of the short pieces of rope. He then tied the spare anchor-line at the centre of this rope, so that, if the sweep were cast overboard, it would be dragged through the water horizontally, offering its full resistance.

To this sweep he then rapidly hitched the other one, and then the boat-hook; and, finally, he hitched to this the big box and the cask, by their lashings.

“What in the world are you going to do with that stuff, Henry?” inquired Bob.

But Harvey had perceived the other’s purpose.

“Good for you, Henry!” he exclaimed. “Where did you ever hear about a sea-anchor?”

“Read about it in a book, once,” responded Henry Burns, coolly. “What do you say—shall we try it? We lose all the stuff if it don’t work. We’ll have to cut it loose.”

“You bet we’ll try it,” said Harvey, hurriedly. “We can’t be in much worse shape than we’re in. Get it up aft now, fellows; and Tom, you and Bob be ready to jump for the halyards and lower the sail, when it goes overboard. Then we’ll tie in that fourth reef in a jiffy.”

The other end of the spare anchor-rope, to which the stuff was tied, was yet to be made fast forward. This was a dangerous task, with the yacht pitching heavily, as it was, and the seas flying aboard. So Henry Burns passed a line about his waist, which was held by Tom and Bob, while he scrambled forward in the darkness and accomplished the feat.

Then they got the mass of stuff which they had tied together up to the stern rail, and, at the word, heaved it overboard. Harvey kept the yacht away from it for a few moments, so that the attraction that floating objects have for one another should not bring it in alongside; and then, when the line had nearly run out, brought the _Viking_ as close into the wind as the seas would allow, and held her there.

The yacht lost headway, and drifted back. Lowering the mainsail, they hurriedly tied in the fourth and last reef. The forestaysail had been taken in, long before.

The line brought up; the clean-built, shapely hull of the yacht drifting back faster than the bulky mass of stuff at the other end of it; and, as the tension came on the line, the bow of the _Viking_ swung around, and she was heading fairly up into the seas, which broke evenly on either side.

“It’s great!” cried Harvey, exultantly. “You’ve got a wise head on you, Henry Burns. Now let’s get the scrap of a mainsail up, and she will lie steadier.”

They hoisted the shred of sail, hauled the boom inboard so that it was as nearly on a line with the keel as they could bring it, and lashed it securely. The sail, thus getting the wind alike on either side, served to steady the yacht, and she rolled less. They had given the improvised sea-anchor the full length of the line, which was a long one, so that the strain would be lessened; and the yacht was riding fairly well.

“She’ll stay like a duck, if the gear only holds,” said Henry Burns.

They waited, watching anxiously, till a half-hour had gone by. The yacht was standing it well. The great seas lifted her bows high and dropped her heavily into the deep, black furrows, and the rain and spray drove aboard in clouds. But the yacht held on.

“She’ll stay, I think,” said Henry Burns; and added, yawning wearily, “if she don’t, I hope she will let us know right away, for I’ll fall asleep here in the cockpit pretty soon. Oh! but this is hard work. I don’t know but what I’ll quit and dig clams for a living.”

“Turn in and take a wink of sleep,” said Harvey. “She’s riding all right. We’ll call you if anything goes wrong.”

“Go ahead,” urged Tom and Bob.

“I believe I will,” said Henry Burns. “But it won’t be a wink, when I get started. You’ll have hard work to wake me. Let me know, though, when it’s my turn to take the wheel, and give one of you fellows a chance.”

With which, Henry Burns, satisfied in his mind that his scheme was working well, went below and fell asleep, unmindful of the bufferings of the seas, the straining of the _Viking’s_ cabin fixtures, and the heavy pitching and tossing that shook the yacht from stem to stern.

“Go ahead, one of you,” said Harvey, addressing Tom and Bob. “Two of us can watch, and if we need you we’ll call you.”

But they shook their heads.

“I’m dead tired,” admitted Bob; “but I couldn’t sleep a wink down in that cabin in this storm. We’ll stick it out till morning, won’t we, Tom?”

“I’d rather,” replied Tom.

“So would I,” said Harvey. “But that’s just like Henry Burns. When he takes a notion a thing is so, he believes it out-and-out. I honestly believe he thinks he is as safe as he would be on an ocean liner.”

Evidently, Henry Burns was satisfied with the situation; and clearly he was a good sleeper. For daybreak found him still wrapped in slumber. Nor did he waken when, the storm abated and the _Viking_ safe at anchor in the harbour at the head of Loon Island, Jack Harvey and the others tumbled below and laid their weary bones beside him.

But, to make return for their kindness in not arousing him to help work the boat, he was up before them, and had dinner piping hot when they opened their eyes at noontime.