“Take time, men,” he sung out coolly, “if you will be cowards and leave the ship. I don’t think she’ll sink—at any rate not yet.” The men had knocked away the chocks, hoisted the boats, and swung the davits outboard. “Keep your heads, you trembling idiots! Pass your painters forward before you begin to lower, and don’t lower till you’ve victualled the boats. You’ve at least a hundred-and-fifty mile run before you can make Charlotte Harbor, which is your best port with this wind blowing; and as like as not you’ll miss your road when you get inshore among the keys and reefs, and be a week getting there.” A few of the men, seeing the force of this, ran below and raided the galley and the steward’s store-room of what they could lay hands upon. But they only brought up one load of tins. They were frightened lest the others should in their terror go off without them. So they bundled their gleanings pell-mell on to the floor gratings, and, with a dozen men in each, the boats began to lower away. When they touched water, the falls were let go to overhaul as they chose, and then unhooked. The boats rode by their painters, swooping on one sea up to the level of the bridge-deck, diving twenty feet down in the next trough, and lying in very great danger of being stove to pieces. A man in each was standing by the painter, others were getting out oars. “Where’s the donkeyman?” cried some one. “And Mr. Onslow?” “And the skipper?” “Oh, in the boat.” “Then cast off. We’ve got all, and we must be clear of the ship before she founders, or she’ll take us down too in her wash.” The painters were slipped, and from either beam the steamer’s lifeboats diverged under the backing impulse of their oars. Out of sight of one another they dropped astern, and each picking a favorable chance, they slewed round in a pother of spray. Then they stepped their masts; and then, one under a jib, and the other under close-reefed lug, they drove away before the wind, leaving the setting of a course for after consideration. Steamer sailors are not used to small-boat sailing in a heavy sea, and it takes them some time to wear down the novelty of it. By a providence, there was the second mate in one, an old North Sea smacksman, to take the tiller, and an able seaman from the same school in the other boat, who was also competent to manage her. The boats were built for the weather, but they required handling; and excepting these two men, there were no others up to the task. The rest trimmed ship, some of them baling, some too frightened to do anything but cling on to a thwart—these last from the fireholds mostly—and with their complements in this danger and disorder, the _Port Edes’_ two lifeboats drove away into the night and the north-north-east. Three men on the steamer, from inside the chart-house, watched the boats go away; and one of them, the donkeyman, was wondering what kind of fool to call himself for being left. CHAPTER XIII. THREE FOR TWENTY-SEVEN.