"The soldiers are not far away," he said.
Desmond asked him no questions, but turned to the seamen. "We have got to do it, boys," he said. "Shift that after roller under her nose."
They drew breath, and toiled on again. Their progress was not reassuring in view of the fact that the troops were close at hand, but they made a little, and in front of them the spray beyond which lay the _Palestrina_ whirled in a filmy cloud. Every now and then there was a thunderous roar in the midst of it, and part of the beach was hidden in a tumultuous swirl of foam. Gasping, straining, slipping, but grimly silent, they toiled on, moving her a foot with every desperate effort, until at last a yeasty flood surged past them knee-deep, and hove her away from them grinding one bilge in the sand. Then Desmond raised a hoarse voice.
"Hang on to her," he said. "Oh, hang on. Down on her bilge, and let her go when the sea sucks out again."
They went out with her and it amidst a sliding mass of sand, and somehow contrived to hold her when the next sea came in. It broke across her, and some of them went down, but when the seething flood swept on up the beach she was there still, and they went out again waist-deep in the downward swirl of it. Then they were up to the shoulders with a great hissing wall of water close in front of them, and black man and white scrambled in over the gunwale and floundered furiously in the water inside her, groping for oar and paddle. Still, they were perched on the gunwale, and the man with the blue-striped forehead had the big steering oar before the sea fell upon them, and straining every muscle they drove her through the breaking crest of it.
She lurched out, half-full and loaded heavily, to face the next, and Desmond was never certain how she got over it, but at least, he was not washed out of her as he had half expected. He fancied there was a faint shouting on the bluff, but nobody could have been sure of that through the din of the surf, and all his attention was occupied by his paddle. Very slowly, fighting for every fathom, they drove her outshore, until the combers grew less steep and their crests ceased to break, and Desmond gazing seawards could see the _Palestrina_ when she lifted. She swung with the swell, a dim, blurred shape, without a light on board her, but a sharp jarring rattle told him that his instructions were being carried out. Winthrop the mate was already heaving his anchor. That was satisfactory, for Desmond knew that nobody could see the yacht through the spray that floated over bluff and beach.