As the wind was well away on the quarter the engines were unnecessary, so under squaresail and topsail alone the _Quest_ flashed merrily southward. We were logging a steady nine knots by this time—better than we’d ever done before, even with engines working and all sail set; a mightily invigorating sensation it was, I must admit.
At four o’clock I went to the wheel, not without a certain amount of trepidation, for the ship appeared a lively problem to tackle, rioting about as she was. This was by far the most strenuous trick I’d experienced, for the following sea played the mischief with her stern and threw it so recklessly about that only by dint of constant twirling of the spokes was it possible to steer even an approximate course. The helm was hard a-port or hard a-starboard all the trick—there was none of that old easeful turning of a spoke either way. The ship seemed to go mad; she took the bit in her teeth, and fretting at the control, simply reared, and capered, and plunged, and bucketed until you’d think she was incapable of further exertion; but just as you satisfied yourself that she was quietening down, away she went again, taking the whole circle of the compass to play with, so that my heart was in my mouth most of the time for fear she might broach to and, coming broadside on to the threshing combers, capsize and finish the matter once and for all.
Yet it was thrilling, magnificently so, to realize that I’d got this boisterous vessel between my hands and was master of her destinies. The clamour of the gale was nothing, the level drive of spindrift as the roaring wind clipped off the wave-crests and hurled them aboard was but a challenge to war. Mr. Wild, who had the watch, was not at all anxious to rid us of the benefit of this good fair wind; and he cracked on for all he was worth, in regular, old-fashioned clipper style, and imagined he was back in his younger days when steam seemed a poor servant and spray-washed canvas the one great thing that counted, and when he was relieved at four o’clock he passed the word to keep on carrying on. This we did until six, when the Boss decided that we’d run quite far enough, and that now was the time to heave-to, since a ship making no headway at all is better than a ship plunging to the bottom of the sea. I, being off duty, had just turned in and was dropping off into that sleep which comes as a reward for much honest toil, when I was rudely awakened by a sanakatowzer of a sea that, obeying a purposeful weather-roll of the ship, had boarded us and was flooding down the companionway towards my berth, which, unfortunately for me, lay right in its track. I got out on deck as nimbly as I’ve ever done it, and there was compelled to sheer awe by the affrighting majesty of the waves, which were towering now to our very trucks, so far as my impression went, though I’m told the biggest was not more than forty feet in height from trough to crest.