Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/246

238 in the bay that kept the Suffolk rolling like a porpoise. A heavier lurch than ordinary sent her main channels grinding down on the mackerel boat's gunwale, smashing her upper strakes and springing her mizzen mast as she recovered herself.

"Be dashed," said one of the officers, "if I trust myself in a boat that'll go down under us between this and land!"

The rest seemed to be of his mind, too. But Billy, being quick as well as eager, saw in a moment that the damaged strakes would be to windward on the reach into Mousehole, and well out of harm's way in the wind then blowing, and also that her mainsail alone would do the job easy. So just as she fell off and her crew ran aft to get the mizzen lug stowed he took a run past the officer and jumped aboard, with two fellows close on his heels—one a Penzance fellow whose name I've forgot, and the t'other a chap from Ludgvan, Harry Cornish by name. I reckon the sight of the old shores just made them mazed as sheep, and like sheep they followed his lead. The officers ran to stop any more from copying such foolishness; and if they hadn't, I believe the boat would have been swamped there and then. As 'twas, she re-hoisted her big lug and away-to-go for Mousehole, the three passengers sitting down to leeward with their sterns in and out of the water to help keep her damaged side above mischief.

So on Mousehole Quay these three stepped ashore, and the first man to shake hands with them was