"Starboard yet," cried
David; and she headed toward the high mainland under whose lee was
calm and safety. Alas! at this moment a snorter of a sea broke under
her broadside, and hove her to leeward like a cork, and a tide eddy
catching her under the counter, she came to more than two points, and
her canvas, thus emptied, shook enough to tear the masts out of her by
the board.
"Port your helm! PORT! PORT!" roared David, in a voice like the roar
of a wounded lion; and, in his anxiety, he bounded to the helm
himself; but Lucy obeyed orders at half a word, and David, seeing
this, sprang forward to help Jack flatten in the foresheet. The boat,
which all through answered the helm beautifully, fell off the moment
Lucy ported the helm, and thus they escaped the impending and terrible
danger of her making sternway. "Helm amidships!" and all drew again:
the black water was in sight. But will they ever reach it? She tosses
like a cork. Bang! A breaker caught her bows, and drenched David and
Jack to the very bone. She quivered like an aspen-leaf but held on.
"Starboard one point," cried David, sitting down, and lifting an oar
out from the boat; but just as Lucy, in obeying the order, leaned a
little over the lee gunwale with the tiller, a breaker broke like a
shell upon the boat's broadside abaft, stove in her upper plank, and
filled her with water; some flew and slapped Lucy in the face like an
open hand. She screamed, but clung to the gunwale, and griped the
helm: her arm seemed iron, and her heart was steel.
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