Read Online 02 South Sea Adventure by Willard Price - Free Book Online

were all but swept overboard. The roar of the wind struck like a clap of thunder. The stinging spray began to cut into faces and hands. The blue sky was gone and there was nothing but that ghostly darkness streaming past.
    The waves were lower, not much higher than the masts now, but they were all going one way and seemed to have a deadly purpose.
    It was soon plain that the hurricane’s second act was going to be worse than the first. Both wind and wave were more violent than before. Birds and insects disappeared as if by magic. Rigging was being blown to bits. The sails escaped from their lashings and went up into the wind in rags and tatters. The boom broke loose and swung murderously back and forth across the deck.
    There was too much to do for Hal arid Roger to consider the luxury of lashing themselves to the masts. They helped Omo - and wondered about Crab. .
    The ship was wrenched as if by giant hands. There was a rending sound aft and the wheel went lifeless.
    ‘The rudder!’ cried Captain Ike. ‘It’s gone!’
    The ship’s nose dropped away from the wind. She broached to and lay in the trough, rolling with a sickening wallow.
    At every roll she took on tons of water that surged across the deck shoulder-deep and thundered down the companionway into the hold.
    The captain already had the pumps working to clear the hold but water was coming on board too fast.
    Crab’s siesta came to a choking end. He woke to find himself under water, salt sea crowding down into his lungs. He got into action with remarkable speed, and struggled up to the deck, gasping and sputtering.
    Nature evidently liked to play tricks with Crab. He had no sooner come on deck than a wave caught him and washed him over the rail.
    ‘Man overboard!’ shouted the captain.
    The words were just out of his mouth when the backwash of the same wave that had carried Crab overboard carried him back and deposited him with a thump on the deck. The boys laughed to see the look of dumb surprise on his face.
    ‘Get a grip on yourself,’ said the captain sharply, ‘or you’ll be going over again.’
     
    But no one had time to pay much attention to Crab. The Wind that Kills, as the Polynesians call the hurricane, seemed determined to do away with the Lively Lady.
    The ship lurched violently, there was a tearing, splitting sound, and the mainmast fell. Still bound to the ship by stays, ratlines, and halyards, it dragged in the sea, listing the deck heavily to port. A few moments later the foremast went down, smashing the dinghy as it fell.
    This was no longer an adventure. It was a tragedy. The Lively Lady was no longer a ship, she was a wreck. And the lives of those on board could not have been insured for tuppence. ‘Rig a sea anchor!’ bawled the captain. With the hold full of water, every wave now rolled clear over the ship. To add to the torment, rain began to fall, not in drops but in bucketsful. Unbelievable weights of water dropped like sledgehammers on the heads and shoulders of the seamen.
    Hal could now believe what he had been told of hurricane rain. In a certain Philippine hurricane more rain fell in four days than the average rainfall for a whole year in the United States.
    It was almost more comfortable under a wave than under the flailing of the rain.
    But there was no moment for rest - if a sea anchor were not rigged quickly the ship was going to founder with all hands.
    The boys swung the fallen foremast parallel with the mainmast. They lashed the two together. They made fast a stout cable to the masts and looped the other end over mooring bitts on the bow of the vessel.
    Then they cut the stays and lines that held the masts to the ship. The masts slid off the deck into the sea.
    Since the ship was carried along by the wind, while the masts, half-submerged, were not, the effect of the sea anchor was to bring the bow of the ship up into the wind, so it met the waves head-on and the danger of foundering was a little diminished.
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