“If it gets any worse we’ll have to weigh anchor and scoot,” he reported. “That baby hawser is getting quite a strain on it.”
For the next half hour the sloop rocked without stopping, and the three sat and talked in low tones. Each time a wave hit the little ship it jerked roughly at the anchor cable. Finally, shaking his shaggy head, the captain got up.
“Turn your power on,” he ordered Jim. “We’ve got to get that mud-hook up. If we don’t the cable’ll bust in two and then we’ll be bouncing all over the ocean.”
While Jim turned on the power the captain scrambled outside to pull up the anchor. Even under full power the _Lassie_ made little headway, only enough to slack up the strain on the taut cable. Bending double in the raging storm the old sea captain slowly and painfully cranked up the hand windlass. Reluctantly, the anchor came up.
Immediately the captain flew to the tiller, for, once released of the controlling power of the anchor the sloop bucked and rolled like a thing alive. Jim shut off the power and the boys looked out of the companionway, which was opened on a crack, at the captain, where he sat holding the sloop firmly on its course.
“What shall we do now?” Jim shouted to the skipper.
“Toss me out a good oilskin and then go to bed,” he returned, looking through narrowed eyes at the huge waves that rolled around them.
Terry handed him a suit of oilskins. “We don’t want to go to bed, sir,” he said. “Too much excitement.”
The captain slapped his knee. “Excitement, by golly! What kind of sailors do you two calculate to be? Don’t you know a real jack tar don’t let anything bother his sleep but the sinkin’ of the ship! And answer me this: either of you ever try to hold a small vessel in line in a blow?”
The boys shook their heads. The captain chuckled. “If you tried this tonight, you’d be flappin’ back and forth in the breeze like a shirt on a line. Get into bed and get some sleep!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” laughed Jim. He and Terry climbed into their bunks, but for a time found sleep impossible.
“My gosh!” gasped Terry. “I was never in a bed that threw you up in the air like this.”
Finally, however, almost worn out by the events of the day, the boys went to sleep, to wake up several hours later. They sprang up and opened the companionway slide, to find that they were far from the island. The wind had gone down and the stalwart old captain still sat at the tiller.