The flare crackled, leapt up, smouldered, and was extinguished by a bucket of water.
A couple of lanterns--bright globular glasses--were lighted, and hung up in the main rigging, one on each side. This brought the hour to about a quarter past ten. The sea was again searched, its ghastly face had stolen out, and the heads of the breaking billows under that thick and pallid sky were like flashes of guns in mist.
'If the lady isn't in this circle, Captain Parry,' said Mr. Blundell cheerfully, 'let's hope we'll find her in the next. If the boat's within ten miles of us they'll have seen our flare and those fireballs.'
'But we are moving through the sea,' said Captain Parry. 'If we make them a head wind, and continue to sail, how are they to fetch us?'
'The schooner's only just under command, sir. If I heave to the drift will put me out. With your kind leave I'll go below and get a glass of grog.'
They both went into the cabin, leaving a man to look out. They were waited upon by the 'boy,' who was, indeed, a young man of about eight-and-twenty, with a face full of sallow fluff, and an old man's look in his eyes and in the contraction of his brows, as though he had been born in the workhouse and knew life.
But at sea there were but three ratings, and if you don't sign articles as an able or ordinary seaman, then, if you were eighty years old, and could scarcely creep over the ship's side with your cargo of scythe and hour-glass, you'd still be called a boy.
The mate and Captain Parry sat for a little in the cabin, sipping cold brandy and water.
'Should the men in the boat see our flares and rockets,' said the captain, 'what will they think of them?'
'But if they make out that we are the schooner of their piracy and murders, will they come on board?'
'She's an open boat, sir, and you have to consider how men will be driven by exposure. Anyhow,' said Mr. Blundell, 'if we can only coax her this side the horizon, we may easily keep her in sight till we've worn them out.'
'I have been thinking of these red-hot skies, too. Will Miss Vanderholt be able to survive the exposure of even a day and a night?' And Captain Parry swayed in his chair with the grief of the thought.
'Well,' said the mate, with the note of a stout heart in his voice, 'only a sailor is able to tell a man what ladies really can go through. Low-class females, emigrants and the like, cave in quickly; they are the shriekers. They cannot bear terror, and it kills them on rafts and in boats. But your thoroughbred lady is always the one that I've seen, heard of, and read of, who has shown a lion's heart and the coldness of a stone head in shipwreck. If Miss Vanderholt be in the boat, you'll find that she'll have suffered less than the men.'