Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/103

leechlines and buntlines! Come, furl the sail fast and secure the yard lest it traverse and gall!”

"‘T was a fierce gust,” an old sailor cried to Phil, who had reached for the rigging and saved himself from going down to the lee scuppers. ‘‘We best look the guns be all fast. I mind, in the Grace and Mary, my second Guinea voyage, a gun burst its breechings — ”

“Belay the fore down-haul!” the mate thundered, and leaving his tale untold, the old man went crawling forward.

The men heard faintly the orders to the helmsman, “Hard a-weather! — Right your helm! —— Now port, port hard! More hands! He cannot put up the helm!” Then out of the turmoil and confusion a great voice cried, "A sail! A sail!”

"Where?”

“Fair by us.”

"How stands she?”

“To the north’ard.”

She lay close hauled by the wind and as the Rose of Devon, scudding before the sea, bore down the wind and upon her, she hove out signs to speak; but though Captain Candle passed under her lee as near as he dared venture and learned by lusty shouting that she was an English ship from the East Indies, which begged the Rose of Devon for God’s sake to spare them some provisions, since they were eighty persons on board who were ready to perish for food and water, the seas ran so high that neither the one vessel nor the other dared hoist out a boat; and parting, the men of the Rose of Devon lost sight of her in the gathering dusk.

Still more and more the storm increased. Darkness came, but there was no rest at sea that night.