Daylight was coming; there was a yellow tinge all about them, shut in by the low sky overhead. As Hornblower looked aloft he saw a hump, a bubble, appear on the main yard, and the bubble promptly burst into fragments. The wind was tearing the sail from its gaskets. The process was repeated along the yard, as the wind with fingers of steel pried into the solid roll of the sail to tear it loose, rip it open, split it into ribbons, and then tear off the ribbons to whirl them away to leeward. It was hard to believe that a wind could have such power.
It was hard to believe, too, that waves could be so high. A glance at them explained at once the fantastic motion of the ship. They were appalling in their immensity. The one approaching the starboard bow was not as high as a mountain — Hornblower had used the expression ‘mountain high’ himself, and now, trying to estimate the height, had to admit to himself that it was an exaggeration — but it was as high as a lofty church steeple. It was a colossal ridge of water moving, not with the speed of a racehorse, but with the speed of a hurrying man, straight upon them. Pretty Jane lifted her bow to it, lurching and then climbing, rising ever more steeply as she lay upon the towering slope. Up — up — up; she seemed to be almost vertical as she reached the crest, where it was as if the end of the world awaited her. At the crest the wind, temporarily blanketed by the wave, flung itself upon her with redoubled force. Over she lay, over and over, while at the same time her stern heaved itself up as the crest passed under her. Down — down — down; the deck almost vertical, bows down, and almost vertical on her beam, and as she wallowed down the slope minor waves awaited her to burst over her. With the water surging round him waist deep, chest deep, Hornblower felt his legs carried away from under him and he had to hang on with every ounce of his strength to save himself.
Here was the ship’s carpenter trying to say something to the captain — it was impossible to speak intelligently in that wind, but he held up one hand with the fingers spread. Five feet of water in the hold, then. But the carpenter repeated the gesture. Then he tried again. Two spreadings of the fingers — ten feet of water, then. It could hardly be the case, but it was true — the heavy heavings of the Pretty Jane showed she was waterlogged. Then Hornblower remembered the cargo with which she was laden. Logwood and coir; logwood floated only sluggishly, but coir was one of the most buoyant substances known. Coconuts falling into the sea (as they often did, thanks to the palm’s penchant for growing at the water’s edge) floated for weeks and months, carried about by the currents, so that the wide distribution of the coconut palm was readily accounted for. It was coir that was keeping Pretty Jane afloat even though she was full of water. It would keep her afloat for a long time — it would outlast the Pretty Jane, for that matter. She would work herself to fragments before the coir allowed her to sink.
So perhaps they had another hour or two of life before them. Perhaps. Another wave, cascading green over Pretty Jane‘s upturned side, brought a grim warning that it might not be as long as that. And amid the rumble and the roar of the bursting wave, even as he hung on desperately, he was conscious of a succession of other sounds, harder and sharper, and of a jarring of the deck under his feet. The deckhouse! It was lifting on its bolts under the impact of the water. It could not be expected to stand that battering long; it was bound to be swept away, soon. And — Hornblower’s visual imagination was feverishly at work — before then its seams would be forced apart, it would fill with water. Barbara would be drowned inside it before the weight of water within tore the deckhouse from its bolts, for the waves to hurl it overside with Barbara’s drowned body inside. Clinging to the binnacle Hornblower went through some seconds of mental agony, the worst he had ever known in his life. There had been times and times before when he had faced death for himself, when he had weighed chances, when he had staked his own life, but now it was Barbara’s life that he was staking.
To leave her in the deckhouse meant her certain death soon. The alternative was to bring her out upon the wave-swept deck. Here, tied to the mast, she would live as long as she could endure the buffeting and the exposure, until the Pretty Jane broke up into fragments, possibly. For himself he had played out a losing game to the bitter end more than once; now he had to brace himself to do the same for Barbara. He made the decision. On Barbara’s behalf he decided to struggle on as long as was possible. Forcing himself to think logically while the stupefying wind roared round him, he made his plans. He awaited a comparatively calm moment, and then made the perilous brief journey to the foot of the mainmast. Now he worked with frantic rapidity. Two lengths of the main-topsail halliards; he had to keep his head clear to prevent his fumbling fingers from entangling them. Then two desperate journeys, first to the wheel, and then to the deckhouse. He tore open the door and stumbled in over the coaming, the lines in his hands. There were two feet of water in the deckhouse, surging about with the motion of the ship, Barbara was there; he saw her in the light from the door. She had wedged herself as well as she might in her bunk.
“Dearest!” he said. Within the deckhouse it was just possible to be heard, despite the frantic din all round.
“I’m here, dear,” she replied.
Another wave burst over the Pretty Jane at that moment; water came pouring in through the gaping seams of the deckhouse and he could feel the whole thing lift again on its bolts and he knew a moment of wild despair at the thought that he might already be too late, that the deckhouse was going to be swept away at this moment with them in it. But it held — the surge of the water as Pretty Jane lay over the other way flung Hornblower against the other bulkhead.
“I must get you out of here, dear,” said Hornblower, trying to keep his voice steady. “You’ll be safer tied to the mainmast.”
“As you wish, of course, dear,” said Barbara, calmly.
“I’m going to put these lines round you,” said Hornblower.
Barbara had managed to dress herself in his absence; at any rate she had some sort of dress or petticoat on. Hornblower made fast the lines about her while the ship rolled and swayed under their feet; she held her arms up for him to do so. He knotted the lines round her waist, below her tender bosom.