Towards midnight our plight grew
so desperate that Billy, consulting no one, determined to risk all--
the unknown dangers of the coast, his complete ignorance of
navigation, the risk of presenting her crazy stern timbers to the
following seas--and run for it. At once we were called up from the
hold and set to relieve the half-dead workers at the pumps.
All that night we ran blindly, and all next day. The gale had
southerned, and we no longer feared a lee-shore: but for forty-eight
hours we lived with the present knowledge that the next stern wave
might engulf us as its predecessor had just missed to do. The waves,
too, in this inland sea, were not the great rollers--the great kindly
giants--of our Atlantic gales, but shorter and more vicious in
impact: and, under Heaven, our only hope against them hung by the two
ropes of Billy's jury steering-gear.
They served us nobly. Towards sunset of the second day, although to
eye and ear the gale had not sensibly abated, and the sea ran by us
as tall as ever, we knew that the worst was over. We could not have
explained our assurance.
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