Frantically he tugged and tore at the slimy rope, hauling with a will and a prayer. It gave more readily, towards the end, but he seemed to have fought with it for ages when at last the anchor tripped and he got it in.
Immediately he leaped back to the stern, fitted in the tiller, and seizing the mainsheet, drew the boom in till the wind should catch in the canvas. In the dory the skipper, bending at his oars, was not two yards astern.
He was hard aboard when, the sail filling with a bang, Kirkwood pulled the tiller up; and the cat-boat slid away, a dozen feet separating them in a breath.
A yell of rage boomed down the wind, but he paid no heed. Careless alike of the dangers he had passed and those that yawned before him, he trimmed the sheet and stood away on the port tack, heading directly for the Nore Lightship.
Kirkwood's anger cooled apace; at worst it had been a flare of passion--incandescent. It was seldom more. His brain clearing, the temperature of his judgment quickly regained its mean, and he saw his chances without distortion, weighed them without exaggeration.
Leaning against the combing, feet braced upon the slippery and treacherous deck, he clung to tiller and mainsheet and peered ahead with anxious eyes, a pucker of daring graven deep between his brows.
A mile to westward, three or more ahead, he could see the brigantine standing close in under the Essex shore. At times she was invisible; again he could catch merely the glint of her canvas, white against the dark loom of the littoral, toned by a mist of flying spindrift. He strained his eyes, watching for the chance which would take place in the rake of her masts and sails, when she should come about.
For the longer that manoeuver was deferred, the better was his chance of attaining his object. It was a forlorn hope. But in time the brigantine, to escape Maplin Sands, would be forced to tack and stand out past the lightship, the wind off her port bows. Then their courses would intersect. It remained to be demonstrated whether the cat-boat was speedy enough to arrive at this point of contact in advance of, or simultaneously with, the larger vessel. Every minute that the putative _Alethea_ put off coming about brought the cat-boat nearer that goal, but Kirkwood could do no more than hope and try to trust in the fisherman's implied admission that it could be done. It was all in the boat and the way she handled.