No! A feeble cry reached Briant, who hurried to the windlass in the frame of which the foot of the bowsprit was fitted. There he found the negro stuck in the very angle of the bow. A halliard was tightening every instant round his neck. He had been saved by it when the wave was carrying him away. Was he now to be strangled by it?
Briant opened his knife, and, with some difficulty, managed to cut the rope. Moko was then dragged aft, and as soon as he had recovered strength enough to speak, "Thanks, Massa Briant," he said, and immediately resumed his place at the wheel, where the four did their utmost to keep the yacht safe from the enormous waves that now ran behind them, for the waves now ran faster than the yacht, and could easily board her as they passed. But what could be done? It was impossible to set the least scrap of sail.
In the southern hemisphere the month of March corresponds to that of September in the northern, and the nights are shorter than the days. About four o'clock the horizon would grow grey in the east, whither the schooner was being borne. With daybreak the storm might lull. Perhaps land might be in sight, and the fate of the schooner's passengers be settled in a few minutes!
About half-past four a diffused light began to appear overhead. Unfortunately the mist limited the range of view to less than a quarter of a mile. The clouds swept by with terrible rapidity. The storm had lost nothing of its fury; and but a short distance off the sea was hidden by the veil of spray from the raging waves. The schooner at one moment mounting the wave-crest, at the next hurled into the trough, would have been shattered to pieces again and again had she touched the ground.
The four boys looked out at the chaos of wild water; they felt that if the calm was long in coming their situation would be desperate. It was impossible that the schooner could float for another day, for the waves
