Captain Candage pulled himself to the keel, sat upon it, and found
speech in faltering manner.
"I ain't a member of no church, never having felt the need of j'ining,
and not being handy where I could tend out. But I ain't ashamed to say
here, before witnesses, that I have just been telling God, as best I
know how, hoping He'll excuse me if I 'ain't used the sanctimonious way,
that I'm going to be a different man after this--different and better,
according to my best lights."
"I believe you have spoken for all of us, Captain Can-dage," said Mayo,
earnestly. "I thank you!"
They all perceived that the Polly had made offing at a lively pace
during her wild gallop under the impetus of the easterly.
Mayo balanced himself on the keel and took a long survey of the horizon.
In one place a thread of blue, almost as delicate as the tracery of a
vein on a girl's arm, suggested shore line. But without a glass he was
not sure. He saw no sign of any other craft; the storm had driven all
coasters to harbor--and there was not wind enough as yet to help them
out to sea again. But he did not worry; he was sure that something,
some yacht or sea-wagon, would come rolling up over the rim of the ocean
before long. The faint breeze which fanned their faces was from the
southwest, and that fact promised wind enough to invite shipping to
spread canvas.
Only the oval of the schooner's broad bilge showed above water, and the
old Polly was so flat and tubby that their floating islet afforded only
scant freeboard.
Mayo shoved his arm down into the hole through which they had escaped.
After the air had been forced out the lumber was within reach from the
schooner's bottom. He fumbled about and found the ax. Some of the short
bits of lumber which they had used as battering-rams were in the jaws
of the hole. He busied himself with hewing these ends of planks into big
wedges and he drove them into cracks between the planks near the keel.
"It may come to be a bit sloppy when this sou'wester gets its gait on,"
he suggested to the skipper. "We'll have something to hang on to."
Captain Candage's first thankfulness had shown a radiant gloss. But
he was a sailorman, he was cautious, he was naturally apprehensive
regarding all matters of the sea, and that gloss was now dulled a bit by
his second thought.
"We may have to hang on to something longer 'n we reckon on. We're too
far off for the coasters and too far in for the big fellers. And unless
something comes pretty clost to us we can't be seen no more 'n as if we
was mussels on a tide reef. We'd ought to have something to stick up."