"Got anything to bail with, forward there?"
"Stand-by to shake out that reef!" We luffed for a second while two gigs and a pinnace crept up on our quarter, and then off we went in the seething wake of the cutter. Even Casey's big toe curled convulsively as he braced himself against the thwart and spat on his hands to get a fresh grip on the main-sheet. The spray hissed over us like rain, and, under cover of his oilskin, I believe No. 5, perched on the weather gunwale, was sorrowfully unlacing his boots.
"If it don't get no worse," says Casey, "we'll do all right." With his bull-dog chin above the gunwale he commenced a running commentary on the proceedings. "... 'Strewth! There's 'is foremast gorn!" He gazed astern enraptured. "Commander's weather-shroud carried away, sir, an' 'im a-drifting 'elpless.... Them whalers is bailin' like loo-natics--" he gave a hoarse chuckle, "like proper loo-natics, sir.... That there launch precious near fouled the mark-buoy.... 'E'll run down that gig if 'e don't watch it. Their owner sailing 'er too."
Then the squalls died away and the breeze steadied. I could hear the surge of a launch as she came crashing along on our quarter, but once round the second mark-buoy and on the port tack no one could touch us--at least so Casey vowed.
Suddenly, the half-drowned bowman gave the first sign of animation that he had displayed since the green seas began to break over him. "She's missed stays," he announced with gruff relish, peering under the lip of the foresail.
"'Oo? Not that cutter...?" Casey so far forgot himself as to squirt tobacco juice into the sacred bottom of his own boat. "Yessir, an' so help me," he added in confirmation, "she's in Hirons!"[#]
[#] A boat is said to be "in irons" when she lies dead head-to-wind and cannot pay off on either tack.
The next minute we passed to windward of our rival, as with flapping sheets and reversed helm she drifted slowly astern. Her Midshipman avoided our eyes as we passed, but his expression of incredulous exasperation I have seen matched only on the face of one whose loved and trusted hunter has refused a familiar jump. Above the noise of the wind and waves I heard his angry wail--
The wind held fair and true, and, as Casey prophesied, it proved a Galley's day after all. A launch and two pinnaces raced us for the Flagship's ram, and our rudder missed the cable by inches as we wore to bring us on to the finishing line. Even then the launch nearly had it; but I think that the observations exchanged, as we slipped round side by side (_sotto voce_ and perfectly audible to every one in both boats), between Casey and the launch's Coxswain, did much to spoil the nerve of the First Lieutenant who was sailing her.