"This most exceedingly damn dangerous place, sah!"
But the commander was too busy acting all three L's--Log, Lead and
Lookout--his shrouded figure swaying to the heave and fall and his
eyes fixed straight ahead of him on the double line of boiling foam.
He had conned his course and had it charted in his head. There was
no time to argue with a pilot.
"Port you-ah hel-um, sah! Port you-ah hel-um!"
"By the mark--seven!" sang Joe Byng from the chains.
"Port you-ah hel-um, sah!" yelled the pilot in an ecstasy of fright.
"Starboard a little," came the quiet command.
Curley Crothers moved his wheel and the Puncher's bow yawed twenty
feet, as if Providence had pushed her.
"Gawd A'mighty!" murmured Joe Byng, gazing open-mouthed at fifty feet
of jagged rock that grinned up suddenly three waves away.
The pilot braced both feet against a stanchion and tried to take the
weigh off her by pulling.
"Half speed, sah! Go slow, sah! Go dead slow, sah! You'll pile
up you-ah damn ship, sah! Ah tell you, sah, you'll pile her up as
suah as hell, sah! 'Bout a million sharks round he-ah, sah! For
the love o' God, sah--Captain, sah--"
"Oh, muzzle him, some one!" ordered the commander, and the jiggling,
complaining engines danced ahead, the horrid gray beneath the pilot's
ebony notwithstanding.
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