She understood me, but was too weak and dazed as yet to be of use. The shouts from the shore were incessant. The men had heard the chain cable as it rattled through the hawse-pipe, and I judged they were yelling to the ship, as though hailing Forrest; but they were too far distant for their syllables to reach us. I spent a breathless moment in sweeping the sea towards the mouth of the lagoon, and on a sudden saw the boat like a drop of ink on the star-touched shadow of the water; but I heard no sounds of her being sculled—which would be the fellow’s only chance of getting ashore—nor could I catch the least sign of his figure. My immediate business now was to get the foretopsail mast-headed as best we could. There was a little winch just abaft the mainmast. Shouting out my intentions to Wetherly, I bent on the first length of rope I met with to the hauling part of the topsail halliards and brought it to the winch, where I took some turns with it. As I did this, Miss Temple descended the poop ladder. ‘Have you strength to hold on to this rope?’ I cried to her. ‘Oh, yes,’ she answered. I put it into her hand, bidding her do no more than keep a light strain upon it, that it might not slip; and in a moment the little winch was rattling with the chirruping of its pawls going straight up in the air like an endless cocking of muskets to Wetherly’s and my vigorous arms. By this means we contrived to hoist the foretopsail, though not, as will be supposed, to a ‘taut leech,’ as sailors call it. Yet the cloths showed a wide surface to the wind, and already the nimble frame of the little barque, yielding to the summer pressure aloft, was sliding along very nearly as fast as the men could have urged the heavy long-boat through the water, supposing them to have recovered her and to be in pursuit. Whilst Wetherly manœuvred with the maintopsail halliards in readiness for hoisting the yard, I once again hurried aft to the wheel, to make sure of the course of the barque. She was drifting dead before the small breeze with her head at about east-by-north, and already had brought the island veering upon the quarter, lying down there in a lump of blackness in the starlit gloom, with just the gleam of the bit of northern coral sea-board glancing off the dusk of the shelving reef. From time to time I could hear the fellows shouting, but their voices were now sounding thin, weak, and remote. The star-flakes in the black water astern trembled to the mild passage of the wind; and sparks of the sea-fire, like golden seed, churned up in our wake mingled with those delicate crystal reflections. With an eager passionate prayer upon my lip that this steady draught would hold, I regained the main-deck; and all being ready, Wetherly and I revolved the winch, Miss Temple holding on as before, and the yards slowly mounted till we could ‘heave and pawl’ no further.