Page:White and Hopkins--The mystery.djvu/231

Rh He did not need to finish. Unless the Laughing Lass could recover before the squall had driven her to leeward a scant half mile, we should be cooked alive in the boiling cauldron at the shore's edge.

For an interminable time, as it seemed to me, we lay absolutely motionless. The scene is stamped indelibly on my memory—the bulwarks high above me, the steep, sleek deck, the piratical figure tense at the wheel, the snarling water racing from beneath us, the lurid glow to landward crawling up on us inch by inch like a hungry wild beast. Then almost imperceptibly the brave schooner righted. The strained lines on Handy Solomon's carven features relaxed little by little. Thrackles, staring over the side, let out a mighty roar.

"Steerage way," he shouted, and executed an awkward clog dance on the reeling deck.

She moved forward, there was no doubt of that, for gradually we were eating toward the wind—but we made considerable leeway as well. Handy Solomon, taut as the weather rigging, took his little advantages one by one like precious gifts. Light there was none; the land was blotted out by the steam and murk which had crept to sea and now was hurled back by the wind. All we could do was to hang there, tasting the copper of excitement, waiting for these different forces to adjust themselves. Inch by inch we crept forward: foot by foot we made leeway. The intensest of the lava glow worked its way from directly abeam to the quarter. By this we knew we must be nearly opposite the cove. At once a new doubt sprang up in our minds.

A moment ago all the energy of our desires had