about noon
However , the danger was come and gone in less than a minute ; it was the extreme point of the reef we had grazed so very closely , and , once past it , we had a clear sea ahead and were out of the reach of all further danger . It was Courtenay , however , who actually saved the felucca ; for at the supreme moment when the little craft plunged into the breakers , and when , if ever , there was the utmost need for coolness and self-possession , what must all hands do but plump down upon their knees , calling upon Saint Antonio and Heaven knows how many other saints to come and help them , Carera himself being one of the foremost to do so , abandoning the tiller meanwhile , and leaving the vessel to take care of herself , at the very moment of all others when she most needed looking after . She of course shot into the wind 's eye in an instant , and in another minute the craft would have been on the rocks , stern-foremost , and beating her bottom in , had not Courtenay -- who happened to be standing close by -- sprung to the tiller and jammed it hard a-weather , thus causing her to pay off and forge ahead before losing steerage-way altogether . Once fairly clear of the point , Carera put his helm up , and away we went , with a flowing sheet , upon a north-west by west course ; arriving off Mangle Point about noon . From thence we began to haul somewhat off from the land , the wind drawing further aft and freshening somewhat as we did so ; so that by sunset the lively little craft had brought Lucrecia Point fairly on her larboard beam . As the sun went down the wind manifested a disposition to drop ; and for a couple of hours we crept along at a speed of scarcely five knots ; but it breezed up again just after the first watch came on deck ; and by two bells we were smoking through it faster than I had ever before seen the craft travel . In accordance with the plan which Courtenay and I had arranged , we took the tiller between us during the whole of the first watch , the two hands whose places we had taken coolly going below and turning in .