“Brail the damned thing up!” he bawled at last, with a red face.  “There ain’t no sense in it.”

It was the last stroke of bewilderment for the poor captain, that he had no sooner brailed up the spanker than the vessel came before the wind.  The laws of nature seemed to him to be suspended; he was like a man in a world of pantomime tricks; the cause of any result, and the probable result of any action, equally concealed from him.  He was the more careful not to shake the nerve of his amateur assistants.  He stood there with a face like a torch; but he gave his orders with aplomb; and indeed, now the ship was under weigh, supposed his difficulties over.

The lower topsails and courses were then set, and the brig began to walk the water like a thing of life, her forefoot discoursing music, the birds flying and crying over her spars.  Bit by bit the passage began to open and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers on the reef; bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low land of the islet began to heave closer aboard.  The yards were braced up, the spanker sheet hauled aft again; the brig was close hauled, lay down to her work like a thing in earnest, and had soon drawn near to the point of advantage, where she might stay and lie out of the lagoon in a single tack.

Wicks took the wheel himself, swelling with success.  He kept the brig full to give her heels, and began to bark his orders:  “Ready about.  Helm’s a-lee.  Tacks and sheets.  Mainsail haul.”  And then the fatal words:  “That’ll do your mainsail; jump forrard and haul round your foreyards.”

To stay a square-rigged ship is an affair of knowledge and swift sight; and a man used to the succinct evolutions of a schooner will always tend to be too hasty with a brig.  It was so now.  The order came too soon; the topsails set flat aback; the ship was in irons.  Even yet, had the helm been reversed, they might have saved her.  But to think of a stern-board at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were foreign to the schooner-sailor’s mind.  Wicks made haste instead to wear ship, a manoeuvre for which room was wanting, and the Flying Scud took ground on a bank of sand and coral about twenty minutes before five.

Wicks was no hand with a square-rigger, and he had shown it.  But he was a sailor and a born captain of men for all homely purposes, where intellect is not required and an eye in a man’s head and a heart under his jacket will suffice.  Before the others had time to understand the misfortune, he was bawling fresh orders, and had the sails clewed up, and took soundings round the ship.

“She lies lovely,” he remarked, and ordered out a boat with the starboard anchor.

“Here! steady!” cried Tommy.  “You ain’t going to turn us to, to warp her off?”

“I am though,” replied Wicks.

“I won’t set a hand to such tomfoolery for one,” replied Tommy.  “I’m dead beat.”  He went and sat down doggedly on the main hatch.  “You got us on; get us off again,” he added.