“Gawd A’mighty!” murmured Joe Byng, gazing open-mouthed at fifty feet of jagged rock that grinned up suddenly three waves away.

The pilot braced both feet against a stanchion and tried to take the weigh off her by pulling.

“Half speed, sah!  Go slow, sah!  Go dead slow, sah!  You’ll pile up you-ah damn ship, sah!  Ah tell you, sah, you’ll pile her up as suah as hell, sah!  ’Bout a million sharks round he-ah, sah!  For the love o’ God, sah—­Captain, sah—­”

“Oh, muzzle him, some one!” ordered the commander, and the jiggling, complaining engines danced ahead, the horrid gray beneath the pilot’s ebony notwithstanding.

“By the deep—­four!” warned Joe Byng in a level sing-song.  The two gongs clanged like an echo to him, and the Puncher’s speed was reduced at once to her point, of minimum stability.  She rolled and quivered like a living thing in fear, falling on and off, nosing out a passage on her own account apparently, and seeming to be gathering all her strength for one tremendous effort.

“That’s bettah, sah!  That’s bettah, Captain, sah!  Go astern!  This he-ah’s the bar, sah—­damn bad place, the bar, sah!  Go astern, sah.  Captain, sah, d’you he-ah me—­go astern!  Try again, ’nother place further up, sah.  Captain, sah!  Over that way; that way thar—­that way, sah!”

He pointed through the sky-flung spray with a trembling finger and his voice was rich with doleful emphasis, but the commander held his course and carried on.  There seemed neither sympathy nor understanding on that unsteadiest of ships.  Curley Crothers, solemn-faced as Nemesis and looking half as compassionate, moved his wheel a trifle.  Joe Byng in the chains kept up his even sing-song, expressionless, as if he were an automatic clock that did not care, but must record the truth each time his dripping pendulum touched bottom.

“And a half—­three!”

White foam was boiling in among the dirty welter, and the Puncher’s bow pitched suddenly as the first big bar wave lifted her; a second later her propellers chug-chug-chugged in surface spume as she kicked upward like a porpoise diving.

“Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy!” groaned the pilot.  “This he-ah watah’s full of sharks, an’ that’s the bar!  You’re on the bar now, Captain, sah!”

“By the mark—­three!” Byng chanted steadily.

“Starboard a little more,” said the commander leaning forward and shoving the pilot away to leeward at the same time.  Then he shouted to the fo’castle head, where a bosun’s mate and his crew had climbed and were awaiting orders in evident and most unreasonable unconcern.

“Get both anchors ready!”

“Aye, aye, sir!” came the answer, and efficiency controlled by experts proceeded at kaleidoscopic angles to defy the elements.  The big steel hooks were ready in an instant.

“Stop her!” ordered the commander.

The gongs clanged out an alarm and the throbbing ceased.