Page:The Catalpa Expedition (1897).djvu/180

150 accomplished nothing more than holding the boat on her course, and almost in despair the men saw the Catalpa tack offshore.

The gale increased in violence as night wore on, and the men were completely worn out. The seas dashed over them, and their strength was taxed to exhaustion in bailing quickly lest the next sea might tumble in and wreck the boat. After the mast went, Captain Anthony took the midship oar, lashed on the jib, and stuck it up. The sheet was hauled aft, and the centreboard lowered, which steadied the boat and kept steerageway on her. The phosphoresence afforded a spectacle which Captain Anthony had never witnessed in equal degree, but it only made the wild scene more terrifying and awful.

For hours the seas continued to hurl themselves across the boat, while the men cast out the sea with bailers improvised from water kegs, the heads of which were knocked out.

Little was said, but occasionally one of the rescued men would ask "Captain, do you think we will float through the night?" The captain would cheerily reply, "Oh, yes, I've been out on many a worse night;" but he has since confessed that he would not have given a cent for the lives of the entire company. Under other circumstances the danger would have been much less. But the boat was overloaded, the gunwales being within two inches of the water, and she was nearly unmanageable. To run back to Garden Island meant capture.