"The mill's good and running weel, but if Miguel's no' sure and steady, there's no much use in my keeping steam," Macallister resumed. "The bit spark o' human intelligence ootweighs a' the power that's bottled in my furnaces. I dinna see what's to guide him, but maybe the old fella thinks like a _baccalao_."
"It was swimming before it was sautit," Macallister rejoined. "Then ye dinna get fish in deep water; they seek their meat in the channels and the tides that run across the sands. Weel, Miguel has his job. I'll away to mine."
He went down the ladder, but Kit clung to the rails. He had not a job; his part was played when he urged Don Erminio to steer for the land, and now as he watched the white seas curl and break he knew his rashness. The steamer's course was a zig-zag; with the savage wind on her quarter, her bows swerved about. All Miguel could do was to let one divergence balance the other. In front was an ominous white crescent, running back into the dark, but broken by a gap in the middle. A man, strapped outside the bridge, hove the lead, but this was an obvious formality, because if he got shallow water _Mossamedes_ could not steam out. If Miguel tried to bring her round, she would drive, broadside on, against the hammered sands.
There was no smoke astern. Revillon, no doubt, had seen the surf and hauled off, but _Mossamedes_ went inshore fast. The horns of the crescent enclosed her and Kit no longer saw a gap. The sea was all a white turmoil and furious combers rolled up astern. One felt them run forward, as if they travelled up an inclined plane, and the ship rode dizzily on their spouting crests. Then for a time Kit saw nothing. Foam enveloped _Mossamedes_, her deck vanished, and he was beaten and blinded. He could hold on, but this was all; the spray came over the wheel-house like a cataract. Kit knew _Mossamedes_ was swinging round because the wind now blew across the house.
The plunges got less violent and the spray was thinner. One saw the iron bulwarks, and the winches in the forward well, about which an angry flood washed. At the end of the bridge, Don Erminio's figure, looking strangely slanted, cut the sky. _Mossamedes_ had run through the gap and was in deeper water behind the sands. Yet the water was not all deep. Another shoal occupied part of the basin and Kit tried to recapture its bearings as he had noted them when he went fishing in the boat. He found he could not. When the light was strong and the swell slow, one could judge distance and know the depth by the changing colour and the measured line of foam. Now there was nothing but foam that tossed in the dark.