High Noon on the High Seas 199 



"Aye, the day be a-coming," he called to the men. "Let us praise 

 Him for this deliverance, for so be it." 



And there were several among the company who fell quietly to 

 praying, for they were deeply religious folk, and although brought 

 up to the perils of the sea and fully cognizant of the skill of their 

 captain, they knew full well that their survival this night was cer- 

 tainly a near miracle. It was not so much the storm, which instead of 

 dying with the sun had increased in fury, but the position they had 

 been in as night had fallen. There had been three preceding days of 

 thick, low scud as dense as any fog which had precluded any possi- 

 bility of fixing their position. Although they should have been well 

 clear of any land, they might just as well have been within a mile of 

 some rocky shore. In fact, they were lost and every man aboard 

 knew it. 



The coming of the dawn gave them at least half an advantage and 

 their spirits began to revive along with the increasing light. Also, 

 the wind began to drop appreciably. 



Captain Christopher Hussey's bearlike figure could now be seen 

 in full detail as he stood in the bow, his legs braced against the gun- 

 wales, pitching to the towering seas so that he looked more like a 

 figurehead on a ship than a man wedged into the narrow end of a 

 thirty-foot open sloop. He was soaked with spray and from his tre- 

 mendous vigil his eyes under their shaggy brows were red and 

 rimmed with salt, but he was as alert as he had ever been throughout 

 the past twenty-four hours, and he peered this way and that, watch- 

 ing the swell around him, the sky above, and the horizon whenever 

 he could see it. And nothing happened nor did anyone speak again 

 for a full half hour while the sky brightened to the intense electric 

 blue of a northern dawn. 



Boatswain Garvey stood by the tiller, his deep-sunken eyes also 

 scanning the horizon all around. He had ideas of his own as to their 

 position, though he would never have made any suggestion on the 

 subject to Captain Hussey. From the set of a current which was run- 

 ning strongly athwart the wind from the northeast, as estimated 

 from the position of the rising sun, he felt that they must be much 

 closer to land than they had been the day before, and therefore he 

 concentrated most of his attention abaft, and it was thus that he first 

 saw something that led to a most extraordinary series of events. 



