“It was nothing. Only what any man would have done.”
“Only you did it.”
He grinned. “We’ll not quibble, Miss McRafferty.”
Nothing more was said; the girl, who from a sense of modesty had drawn her wet clothing back over her body, closed her eyes. She had a beaten look about her; she was pretty enough, and attractive enough to make Halfhyde’s pulse beat a little faster as he looked at the outline of firm breasts beneath the wet chemise, but even when not recovering from a dousing he had noticed the strain in her face. Probably it was no easy thing to be McRafferty’s daughter and to live the life that was hers aboard a ship at sea. She needed the company of other persons of her own age, both women and men, and needed not to have every man deflected in advance by a hard, self-protective father. That, however, was no business of Halfhyde’s.
Goss came back with blankets and a bottle of brandy. He tucked the blankets over the girl, then turned to Halfhyde. “Orders of the Master,” he said. “Nothing’s to be drunk at sea. It’s your responsibility if you ignore that.”
Icily Halfhyde said, “I do not propose to drink myself. The lady’s in need. Pour a measure, and I shall feed it to her.”
Lips pursed, Goss poured a little brandy into a tumbler. Halfhyde took it. “Thank you,” he said. At that moment he felt a sickening lurch of the deck beneath his feet and a heavy clatter of gear overhead. He would be needed on deck. “You’ll stay here and see that Miss MacRafferty comes to no harm.”
WITH EXTREME suddenness, the Aysgarth Falls had been struck by a wind of near hurricane force. Hastening on deck Halfhyde was despatched for’ard by Bullock to assist in getting the remainder of the headsails off her. The jibs and foretops’l stays’ls had been sent down already but by this time a good deal of damage had been done. The fore and main upper tops’ls had been blown clear from the boltropes and had whipped away in tatters into the night. The Aysgarth Falls was taking it green and heavy over the weather rails and was riding sluggishly, wallowing, the wash-ports about as much use as a punt’s baler against the constant inrush. Halfhyde struggled along waist deep in swirling, foaming water, battered by a screaming wind that forced the breath from his lungs, half drowning him as he went right under at times, hanging on for his safety to the lifelines and waiting for the seas to drain away from above his head as half the North Atlantic, as it seemed, pounded aboard and fought to subdue the ship, to stop her dead in her tracks. Around him, green hands did their best to identify the ropes in a spider’s-web of sheets, braces, lifts and stays as the spin-drift flew into their faces from the wave tops, and the solid water knocked their feet from under them, and the wind continued to give ear-splitting tongue like a spirit in fury.
Just before Halfhyde made the fo’c’sle-head, the forecourse joined the upper tops’ls, ripping out from the cringles, hanging for a moment from the rovings and then whipping away out of sight with a great crack that sounded clear and alarming above the gale. Mr Patience, the Second Mate, was laying about him like a lunatic when Halfhyde reached him, driving the hands on to get off the canvas before the rest of it went.
Toil and sweat and breaking muscles did it: that, and time. Halfhyde, calling upon his experience under the Earl of Clanwilliam and his sail training squadron, felt as though he had used up the whole night to take in the fore lower tops’l alone by the time it was clewed up to windward, with the sail itself full of wind; lowered away the halliards and eased off the lee sheet, clewed the yard down and then hauled up on the lee clewline and the buntlines—all in that raving, screaming wind and the darkness, with the ship heeling over to such an extent that the men on the yards were swept viciously through an arc of some seventy degrees as they fought to keep their footing on the thin, swaying ropes. Even when that job had been done the ship didn’t seem to have been eased very much. She lurched and laboured still, the topgallant and royal masts bending and whipping beneath the strain of the movement.
Halfhyde heard the shout from aft: “Clew up for reefing, main lower tops’l…let go maincourse halliards!” It seemed as though McRafferty meant to ride it out from now on, with just enough sail to keep the Aysgarth Falls into the wind and sea. The Second Mate came for’ard while other men went to the halliards belayed to the pinrail. Patience leapt above the pushing water into the shrouds, racing his fo’c’sle hands to the main lower tops’l yard to take his place at the weather earring for the reefing operation. He was aloft quickly, seeing the yard well down in the lifts and then laying out to the weather yard-arm; by the time the men were on the foot-rope he had the earring rove. He hauled it taut and made fast, and when the job was done in the teeth of the gale he shifted to take the bunt for furling the maincourse. The wind was starting to come abeam; they were not getting the sails off quickly enough despite the best efforts of all hands. Another heavy gust struck, pressed relentlessly against the ship, forcing her over and over until the lower yards on the lee side seemed scarcely to clear the foaming water that surged up to them; the yards seemed to Halfhyde to form an up-and-down, almost vertical steel
