"Hard up, and be d---d to you!" repeated Captain Truck, in a voice of
thunder, as Paul darted round the corner of the hurricane-house.
The seaman stood at the wheel, grasping its spokes firmly, his eyes aloft
as usual, but the turns of the tiller rope showed that the order was
not obeyed.
"Hard up, man, hard up! are you mad?" Paul uttered these words as he
sprang to the wheel, which he made whirl with his own hands in the
required direction. As for the seaman, he yielded his hold without
resistance, and fell like a log, as the wheel flew round. A ball had
entered his back, and passed through his heart, and yet he had stood
steadily to the spokes, as the true mariner always clings to the helm
while life lasts.
The bows of the ship fell heavily off, and her stern pressed up towards
the wind; but the trifling delay so much augmented the risk, that nothing
saved the vessel but the formation of the run and counter, which, by
receding as usual, allowed room to escape the dangerous point, as the
Montauk hove by on a swell.
Paul could not see the nearness of the escape, but the purity of the water
permitted Captain Truck and his mates to observe it with a distinctness
that almost rendered them breathless. Indeed there was an instant when the
sharp rock was hid beneath the counter, and each momentarily expected to
hear the grating of the fragment, as it penetrated the vessel's bottom.
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