Just for an instant Dan and the mate peered at the yacht to see if the lines had carried, an instant of which the wily sea took full advantage.  An oily wave reared the bow of the yacht while the swell of its predecessor slued the Fledgling in and around and upward, so that the two craft reared, side by side, bows up and not more than five feet apart.  A scream fluttered from the bridge; men’s voices raised in curses at the clumsy yacht were borne from the pilot-house.  Dan, however, had not time for words; he stood with hands on the wheel watching the red, reeking bow rearing almost in his face; watched it, cool, ready to take the first chance of escape, if the present danger offered such a chance.  Slowly, easily, the wave passed, and down came the two bows with a crash.  The bow of the Veiled Ladye just grazed the Fledgling’s weather rail, tearing off a fender, while Dan signalled full speed astern.  It was fortunate that he had his wits about him, for the erratic yacht, instead of falling back as she naturally should have done, suddenly moved forward under the impulse of a swell, butting the tug, almost gently, about ten feet from the bow.  Then the tug backed clear, and, breasting the waves, began to take up the slack cables.  A hundred yards she went and then stopped headway with a jerk as the men slipped the cables over the bitts.

The collision had not hurt the tug apparently, although there was no telling whether or not the jolt had weakened her structurally.  But Dan was not the man to worry about eventualities.  An hour’s straining and hauling resulted in bringing the yacht’s head full into the seas, and then at four o’clock Dan snuggled his craft to, for the long eleven hours’ fight.

The afternoon waned into twilight, softly, impalpably, and the twilight wavered into night.  A few lights quivered from the reeling yacht and her mast-head lamps described glimmering arcs against the heavens.  Silent and grim, the tug took the brunt of all the seas had to give—­nose piercing the very heart of the waves, splitting them with beautiful precision, rising, falling, reeling, pitching, but, through all, hanging to the yacht with undying tenacity.  So she fought, as she had ever fought.

Contrary to the promise of the afternoon, the gale had not abated; the seas, if anything, raced more fiercely, and the wind, which tore the dark with a wailing moan, departed with a venomous shriek.  Dan and his mate stood hard at the wheel, Noonan, the deck-hand, was stationed astern, and Crampton, the stanch old chief, and his fireman were down in the heart of things, nursing the engines.

They were well nursed, too.  The steady throb, the clank of the throws, and the hum of the eccentrics rose to the pilot-house in cadence as regular as the heart-throbs of a healthy ox.  And the while Dan and his mate gingerly manipulated the wheel so that the strain on the tow-line was constant and even, with no slack or sudden jerks, which were truly to be avoided in the face of the mad sea.