“She’ll never do it,” he managed to articulate. “Veer an’ let . . . let . . . her drive.”
“Where for?” Ortho shouted. “Where for? D’you hear me?”
“Scilly,” came the answer, broken by dreadful liquid chokings.
The waves broke with less violence for a minute or two and Ortho managed to get the _Gamecock_ away before the wind, though she took a couple of heavy dollops going about.
Scilly! A handful of rocks thirty miles away in the open Atlantic, pitch dark, no stars, no compass, the Runnelstone to pass, then the Wolf! At the pace they were going they would be on the Islands long before dawn and then it would be a case of exactly hitting either Crow Sound or St. Mary’s Sound or being smashed to splinters. Still it was the only chance. He would hug the coast as near as he dared till past the Runnelstone—if he ever passed the Runnelstone—and then steer by the wind; it was all there was to steer by.
It was dead northeast at present, but if it shifted where would he be then? It did not bear thinking on and he put it from his mind. He must get past the Runnelstone first; after that . . .
He screwed up every nerve as tight as it would go, forced his senses to their acutest, set his teeth—swore to drive the boat to Scilly—but he had no hope of getting there, no hope at all.
The _Gamecock_, under her rag of canvas, ran like a hunted thing. It was as though all the crazy elements were pouring southwest, out to the open sea, and she went with them, a chip swept headlong in a torrent of clamorous wind and waters. On his right Ortho could just discern the loom of the coast. Breaker-tops broke, hissing, astern, abeam, ahead. Spindrift blew in flat clouds, stinging like hail. Flurries of snow fell from time to time.
He was wet through, had lost all feeling in his feet, while his hands on the sheet and tiller were so numbed he doubted if he could loosen them.
On and on they drove into the blind turmoil. Anson lay in the water at the bottom, groaning and choking at every pitch.
The Monks Cove raid was not an unmixed success. The bag was very slight and the ringleader got clear away. Mr. Carmichael’s impetuosity was responsible for this. The riding officer was annoyed with him; he wished he would go home to Ireland and get drowned in a bog. Had any other officer been in charge of the soldiers they would have made a fine coup; at the same time, he reflected that had any one else commanded, the soldiers would not have been there at all. There were two sides to it. He consoled himself with the thought that, although the material results were small, the morale of the Monks Cove Free Traders had suffered a severe jolt; at any rate, he hoped so. At the outset things had promised well. It was true that the cornet had only mustered thirty-one sabers instead of forty (and two of these managed to drop out between Penzance and Paul), but they had reached the cliff-top not more than fifty minutes behind schedule, to find the picket trussed up like a boiled chicken and all clear.