Then I crawled aft and went to my father and asked him what he thought
of the wind and the chance of its dropping. He had had the lead going
for long now.
"We are right off the Humber mouth, to judge by the colour of the
water," he told me, "or else off the Wash, which is more to the south. I
cannot tell which rightly, for we have run far, and maybe faster than I
know. If only one could see--"
There he stopped, and I knew enough to understand that we were in some
peril unless a shift of wind came very soon, since the shore was under
our lee now, if by good luck we were not carried straight into the great
river itself. So for an hour or more I watched, and all the time it
seemed that hope grew less, for the sea grew shorter, as if against
tide, and ever its colour was browner with the mud of the Trent and her
sisters.
Presently, as I clung to the rail, there seemed to grow a new sound over
and amid all those to which I had become used--as it were a low
roaring that swelled up in the lulls, and sank and rose again. And I
knew what it was, and held up my hand to my father, listening, and he
heard also. It was the thunder of breakers on a sandy coast to leeward.
He put his whistle to his lips and called shrilly, and the men saw him
if they could not hear, and sprang up, clawing aft through the water
that flooded the waist along the rail.
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