The captain's white, strong hand clutched the reins tightly, and his thin lips compressed with restrained emotion.
If the yacht were on the North Reef she would be wrecked, and in all probability Violet, her aunt, and Leicester Dodson, Fitz and Lady Ethel would be drowned.
All the eventualities, the results, and the personal consequences of such a fatality rushed through the captain's brain, and Jem, who was standing by the horse's head, watching his master, saw a gleam of fiendish joy flash across the pale, masterful face. Perhaps the captain knew that he had seen it, for the next instant his face had assumed a look of alarm and anxiety, and, with a burst of excitement not altogether feigned, he flung himself from the saddle, shouting:
"Launch the boat! We must go to her. Who volunteers?"
The men looked out to sea, then shook their heads.
"No boat could live in this, sir," shouted Willie Sanderson, "and if she could, by the time we'd got to the North Reef, the storm would be over. Lookee now, it's clearing off a bit to northward."
The storm abated and passed off as rapidly as it had gathered and broken, and the wet crowd, about an hour afterward, had the extreme pleasure of descrying a white speck on the horizon, which soon grew to be the familiar form of the _Petrel_.
She sailed in, with all her canvas crowded, looking as unconcerned as a swan on a lake after an April shower, and the crowd burst into a cheer of mingled excitement and admiration.
But the captain had determined that there should be a little display of emotion, and therefore when the _Petrel_ ran into the little rude harbor he hurried forward and sprang on to her deck, his two hands outstretched to grasp Violet and Mrs. Mildmay with his face pale and grateful.
With soft but emphatic gratitude and anxiety he went from one to the other of the ladies, while Leicester, in command of the vessel, was seeing that all was made secure.
When he was free he turned to where Fitz and Bertie were assisting the ladies to alight and eyed the captain with a calm, keen scrutiny.
"Alarmed, were you, Captain Murpoint?" he said, in his grand, clear voice. "What would you have been if you had been fated to be with us?" and a slight sneer curled his lip.