“He might not wait two hours,” suggested Mr. Hartley.  “He might get tired of looking at us, and beat back into port.  Then where would be your strategy?”

“Then there wouldn’t be a pilot available.  I’d be justified in going in without one.  Point is, can you hold out below?”

“Man,” said Mr. Hartley, “you’re a genius.”  He peered through the spray down to leeward, where the pilot’s boat danced a death dance alongside, heel and toe to the Puncher’s statelier swing.  “Yes; there are three men bailing, and you’re a genius.  But no!  The answer’s no!  The engines’ll keep on turning, maybe and perhaps, until we make the shelter o’ yon reef.  There’s no knowing what a cherry-red bearing will do.  I can give ye maybe fifteen knots; maybe a leetle more for just five minutes, for steerage way and luck, and after that—­”

Even crouched as he was against the canvas guard he contrived to shrug his shoulders.

“But if we go in there are you sure you can contrive to patch her up?  It looks like a rotten passage, and not much of a berth beyond it.”

“I could cool her down.”

“Oh, if that’s all you want, I can anchor outside in thirty fathoms.”

Curley Crothers heard that and his whole frame stiffened; there seemed a chance yet that the Navy might not be disgraced.  But it faded on the instant.

“Man, we’ve got to go inside and we’ve got to hurry!  Better in there than at the bottom of the Gulf!  Put her where she’ll hold still for a day, or maybe two days—­”

“Say a month!” suggested the commander caustically.

“Say three days for the sake of argument.  Then I can put her to rights.  I daren’t take down a thing while she’s rolling twenty-five and more, and I’ve got to take things down!  Why, man, the engine-room is all pollution from gratings to bilge; if I loosened one more bolt than is loose a’ready her whole insides ’ud take charge and dance quadrilles until we drowned!”

“You won’t try to make Bombay?”

“I’ll try to give ye steam as far as the far side o’ yon reef.  After that I wash my hands of a’ responsibility!”

“Oh, very well.  Mr. White!”

The sublieutenant hauled himself in turn to windward.  Curley Crothers gave the wheel a half-spoke and looked as if he had no interest in anything.  Joe Byng in the chains bowed his head and groaned inwardly; his sticky, spray-washed lead seemed all-absorbing.

“Tell that black robber to hurry aboard, unless he wants me to come in without him.”

The little boat had drifted fast before the wind, and the sublieutenant had to bellow through a megaphone to where the three men bailed and the ragged oarsmen swung their weight against the storm.  The man of ebony, who would be pilot and disgrace the Navy, balanced on a thwart with wide-spread naked toes and yelled an ululating answer.  With his rags out-blown in the monsoon he looked like a sea wraith come to life.  The big gongs clanged again, and the Puncher drifted rather than drove down on the smaller craft.  A hand line caught the pilot precisely in the face.  He grabbed it frantically, fell headlong in the sea, and was hauled aboard.