‘Now, Wetherly,’ I shouted, ‘jump aloft and loose that foresail. Pass your knife through the gaskets. Don’t wait to cast them adrift.’ Then catching up the girl’s hand, which I pressed to my lips before speaking, I asked her to accompany me to the wheel, that she might hold the helm steady and keep the barque straight before the wind. ‘There is no time,’ I exclaimed as I hastened aft with her, ‘to utter more than the few syllables necessary to effect our escape. We must heap all the canvas we can manage to spread upon the ship. We must contrive to blow away out of sight of that island before the breeze fails, or the men will be giving chase in the long-boat.’ She grasped the spokes in silence. The binnacle lamp was unlighted, and the card lay in gloom. I bade her take note of a star that stood like a jewel at the extreme end of the starboard main-yard arm, and swiftly directed her how to move the wheel, if that star swung from the end of the spar, so as to bring it back again to its place. I then sprang to the main-rigging, and climbed with the activity of one to whom the loss of a minute may mean life or death, to the height of the topgallant yard, the sail of which I loosed, and then came hand over hand down to the deck by the stay. The barque was but a toy of a ship at the best, and after the pyramidal heights reared by the Indiaman, her tops and crosstrees looked but a leap from the deck. I had sheeted home the topgallant-sail before Wetherly had let fall the foresail. I summoned him to the halliards, and when the sail was set, we let go the fore clew garnets and hauled the sheet aft. Then we hoisted the foretopmast staysail and other light fore and aft sails; and in order to get as much weight out of the wind as there blew in it, we braced the yards somewhat forward, that the fore and aft canvas might draw. When this was done, I raced aft to the wheel and put it down. No sooner did the little barque feel the air off her beam than she gently sloped her spars to it with a small spitting of froth at her cutwater, and in a few minutes she was gliding along like a yacht, reeling off a fair six knots with water smooth as ice to travel over, small as was the amount of canvas we had made shift to spread. But I could do no more. My strength had failed me, and I was incapable of further exertions. It was not the fatigue of the swim merely, nor my red-hot haste and maddened labours since I had boarded the barque; the frightful hours of expectation, of anticipation, of hopes and fears, and of waiting, that I had passed upon the accursed island since sundown were now heavily telling upon me. ‘Hold the wheel, will you, Wetherly,’ said I. ‘I am pretty nearly spent. I must rest a bit. Thanks be to God, we are safe now, I believe;’ and so saying, I sunk wearily upon the stern gratings.