The loom and bellow of it stunned his senses, but habit is a strong master. His mind went blank, but his hand acted, automatically jamming the helm hard over. The gig had good way on; she spun as a horse spins on its hocks and met the monster just in time. Stood on her stern; rose, seesawed on the crest, three quarters of her keel bare, white tatters flying over her; walloped down into the trough as though on a direct dive to the bottom, recovered and rose to meet the next. The wild soar of the bows sent Anson slithering aft. Ortho heard him coughing under the stroke thwart. “She’ll never do it,” he managed to articulate. “Veer an’ let . . . let . . . her drive.” “Where for?” Ortho shouted. “Where for? D’you hear me?” “Scilly,” came the answer, broken by dreadful liquid chokings. The waves broke with less violence for a minute or two and Ortho managed to get the _Gamecock_ away before the wind, though she took a couple of heavy dollops going about. Scilly! A handful of rocks thirty miles away in the open Atlantic, pitch dark, no stars, no compass, the Runnelstone to pass, then the Wolf! At the pace they were going they would be on the Islands long before dawn and then it would be a case of exactly hitting either Crow Sound or St. Mary’s Sound or being smashed to splinters. Still it was the only chance. He would hug the coast as near as he dared till past the Runnelstone—if he ever passed the Runnelstone—and then steer by the wind; it was all there was to steer by. It was dead northeast at present, but if it shifted where would he be then? It did not bear thinking on and he put it from his mind. He must get past the Runnelstone first; after that . . . He screwed up every nerve as tight as it would go, forced his senses to their acutest, set his teeth—swore to drive the boat to Scilly—but he had no hope of getting there, no hope at all. The _Gamecock_, under her rag of canvas, ran like a hunted thing. It was as though all the crazy elements were pouring southwest, out to the open sea, and she went with them, a chip swept headlong in a torrent of clamorous wind and waters. On his right Ortho could just discern the loom of the coast. Breaker-tops broke, hissing, astern, abeam, ahead. Spindrift blew in flat clouds, stinging like hail. Flurries of snow fell from time to time. He was wet through, had lost all feeling in his feet, while his hands on the sheet and tiller were so numbed he doubted if he could loosen them. On and on they drove into the blind turmoil. Anson lay in the water at the bottom, groaning and choking at every pitch. CHAPTER XVII