The _Quilboma_ was now within sight of her goal. Broad on the port bow could be discerned the long, low beach fringed with a quavering line of milk-white foam and backed by the waving coco-palms and the picturesque bungalows of Kilba's principal port.
"How long will that little lot last you, Mr. Jackson?" inquired the Old Man per voice-tube. "Forty minutes? Ay, I'll see to that."
He pointed to one of the lifeboats. The deck-hands, grasping the significance of this display of dumb-show, threw themselves upon the boat. Axes gleamed and fell with a succession of mingled thuds and crashes. Planks, timbers, knees, breast-hooks, thwarts, masts, and oars--all went below to the still insatiable maw of the devouring element.
The skipper of the _Quilboma_ made no attempt to signal for a pilot. For one reason, he knew the dangerous entrance intimately; for another, it was doubtful whether the pilot could come out and board the vessel. Yet another: the ship could not afford to wait, with her steam pressure falling and the storm perilously close.
The skipper, standing beside the two quartermasters at the helm, was about to take his sorely tried craft over the dangerous bar. It required pluck, but there was no option if she were to make port at all. It had to be now or never, for, if the _Quilboma_ failed to make the bar, she would either be dashed to pieces on the reef or drift helplessly at the mercy of the gale.
With the wind now broad on the starboard beam the old tramp rolled horribly. Peter, hanging on to the bridge-rail, fancied that every piece of steelwork in the hold had broken adrift. Groaning, thudding, quivering, swept by sheets of blinding spray, the _Quilboma_ staggered towards the danger-zone. At one moment her propeller was almost clear of the water; at the next the labouring engines seemed to be pulled up, as the madly racing blades sank deep beneath the surface of the broiling sea.
Now she was in the thick of it. Tossed about like a cork, wallowing like a barrel, the old tramp was almost unmanageable. One of the quartermasters was juggling with the wheel of the steam steering-gear like a man possessed, as he strove to keep the old hooker on her course. To port and starboard the ugly reef was showing its teeth, as the remorseless breakers crashed and receded with a continual roar of thunder.