One by one the idlers in the cabin went to their rooms, and Drew,
putting on a storm-coat, stepped out upon the deck from the forward
companionway, blinded for a moment by the darkness.
Slowly the shadowy world took on blurred outlines, and, turning his
gaze to windward, he saw gray flashes of foam leap high on the pointed
crests of waves, and drop quickly into darkness. The gale tore at him
and beat him down. He remembered that he had seen a sou'wester in his
room, and went softly below to get it. As he opened the door that led
from the passageway to the cabin, Hetty, with swinging arms, went
staggering across the unsteady floor toward the pantry. With a little
thrill of joy at finding her alone once more, Drew hastened to her side.
She was on her knees, peering about her; but, startled by the sudden
obscurity that fell upon the room, she looked up quickly, to see him
standing in the doorway.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "how you frightened me!" and turned to her search
again. "I was looking for something for my mother," she explained
when, a moment later, she rose to her feet. "I cannot find it." Still
glancing vaguely about her, she moved toward the doorway and made as if
to pass him; but he did not stir.
"Can I not help you?" he asked.
She shook her head, but did not look up.
He had sought her with no other purpose than to be by her side for a
moment; for, though he had not seen her alone since he had asked her to
be his wife, he knew that this was not the fitting hour for his answer:
but neither could he let her go.
"I cannot bear to see you suffer," he exclaimed. "Do not think our case
hopeless. It cannot be. We shall reach land yet."
"Oh, you cannot know," she said listlessly. She had no thought to
be indifferent or cruel; standing, as she felt, face to face with
eternity, her thoughts had passed him by. She had come to regions where
he was a vague shadow, a part of a world no longer hers. She was only
the sailor's daughter now; all her faith and dreams lay with those who
were battling on the deck for the lives of all.
Silently he stepped aside, and she went quickly to her room, closing
the door behind her and not looking back.
He could not summon to his mind a single thread of proof; yet, as he
turned away, he knew that unconsciously she had given him her answer.
The closing door between them, he told himself, was the symbol.
He was paler when he went up the companionway again, and his lips were
firmly closed; but there was no harshness in their lines, and he
carried his head high: clearly he would bear whatever life brought to
him.
A moment later, as he stepped into the blinding darkness of the deck,
a wave broke near, and a sheet of water, clipped from the toppling
crest by the wind, swept across the house and struck him like a lash.
Staggered for an instant, with his hand slipping from the sliding-hood,
he dropped behind the house.
He was still kneeling on the deck, brushing the water from his eyes,
when he felt rather than heard or saw some one go by. He would be sent
below, he knew, if seen by the captain or the mate; and he smiled as he
thought of his position, feeling like a schoolboy in mischief and in
danger of detection. Slowly he turned, and, without rising, watched the
passing figure.
It was six bells, and Medbury had come forward to change the crew
at the pumps. As he stepped past the house and made his way to the
life-lines, he lifted his eyes and stopped short. The pumps were
deserted. Then he rushed forward and peered down upon the main-deck;
only the sloppy space showed itself, unrelieved by a human figure. One
of the down-hauls of the whiz-jig, whipping in the gale, snapped across
his face, and was flung irritably aside.
In the first rush of his dismay the thought came to him that all
were lost; but the possibility of four men being swept away without
warning was too much to believe, and across his mind there flashed the
certainty that the crew had refused longer to work the pumps. That
they had been losing heart had been borne in upon him increasingly,
and now that he stood face to face with the desperate situation he
felt his face grow hot with the fury that seized him and bore him out
of himself. Some instinct told him that they had taken refuge down the
booby-hatchway, and he sprang to the sliding-hood, thrust it back, and
peered in. It was black and still, but the intangible something that
betrays the presence of human creatures seemed to pervade the place,
and he knew that his quarry was there. His voice choked with fury as he
yelled:
"You damn' curs--you--you--want to ruin us all! Out of this--quick, or
I shoot you down like rats in a hole!"
No sound came out of the black interior, and with a snarl of rage
he tore open the door, splintering the peg in the hasp, thrust one
foot over the sill to descend, and struck the back of a man. The next
instant he had the man by the collar, lifted him struggling to the
deck, and with a mighty swing sent him forward into the life-lines,
where he hung for a second, and then fell lightly, like a sprawling
cat, to the main-deck. With a snarl, Medbury swung himself into the
opening, and dropped between decks. Three men had been sitting on the
steps below the man he had thrown out, and he swept them off like
leaves from a wand, and he heard their smothered groans as he crushed
them together in a heap on the floor. He was in his own province now,
for the storeroom was his care, and he could have found a sail-needle
there in the dark; and as he freed himself from the sprawling bodies
under him, he swung about him, reaching out, with itching hands, for
his cowed and dispirited crew.
He felt an arm encircle his legs, and kicked back viciously, feeling
rather than hearing his heel crunch against a face. The arm about his
legs dropped limp, and he felt another pawing along his shoulders and
reaching for his throat. With a quick thrust he found a bristly face,
and, striking straight with his free arm, sent the man tumbling to
the floor. He heard the sound of feet stumbling up the stairs, and
thought the fight was won, and so moved back, only to find shoulders
and legs clasped by other men. He clasped back, and the next moment
was staggering about the place in a hand-to-hand struggle. He kicked
himself free again, and with a quick thrust forward threw himself to
the floor, an opponent under him. He heard the sailor's head strike
hard, felt his hold relax, and rose, panting, to his knees as a lantern
swung in at the door, and Captain March's voice, cool and incisive,
called, "Stop right there!" Looking up, Medbury saw the light of
the lantern shining along the barrel of a pistol, and the captain's
impassive face above it.
They put every man at the pumps, lashing them to the life-lines, and,
with a belaying-pin in his hand, Medbury stood guard over them and
rushed them at their work. Now and then a fitful flash of lightning
showed the men and the deck against a background of vitreous green
glare.
Captain March watched them a moment, and then, placing his hand on his
mate's shoulder, yelled at his ear. Even then the words seemed far away
and indistinct.
[Illustration: "'Keep 'em going! Don't let 'em slack up a bit!'"]
"Keep 'em going! Don't let 'em slack up a bit!" he roared. "Never had
such a lot aboard a vessel of mine before. It makes me sick."
"Yes, sir," shouted Medbury, grimly.
"Don't understand it," went on the captain in an aggrieved, plaintive
voice; "nobody could." He paused irresolutely, and then said: "Hurt you
anywhere?"
"Oh, no," answered the mate. "Guess I rather enjoyed it for a change.
Was pretty mad."
The captain nodded, and was turning away when Medbury put out a
detaining hand.
"How'd you know?" he shouted.
"What?"
"How did you know about it--the row?" Medbury asked again.
"The dominie saw something was wrong, and told me. Got your lantern,
too. Good man--seemed to know what to do. Rather surprised me--don't
think they've got that sort of horse-sense, as a rule. But no business
on deck to-night. Told him so." Then he staggered aft, and took the
wheel from the second mate again.
Drew had gone below when the crew went back to the pumps; but he was
strangely excited. He knew that he could not sleep, and in a state of
mental helplessness he sat for a long time upon the edge of his bunk.
Something of the significance of the scene on deck broke in upon him,
and he realized that the crew had given up hope. It was not revolt, but
a dumb, sheeplike acquiescence in fate. In his heart he was not without
a certain sympathy for the men, feeling in the overpowering mastery of
the storm something of the vanity of all human endeavor. Yet the mere
effort of holding himself in check, aloof from all the tumult of the
deck, grew momentarily more and more unbearable, and, rising at last,
he went up to the companionway door again.
He saw at once, novice as he was, that in his brief absence the
situation had grown worse. There was a constant sweep of sheeted spray
across the deck, and he crouched behind the house, as he had done
before, both for protection and to avoid being seen by the mate. He
resented the thought of being ordered below. He could see the steady
rise and fall of the bodies of the men working the pumps, and Medbury
standing near them. It had grown lighter, he perceived, though it was
still black night.
He was beginning to grow drowsy, and for a moment shifted his position,
when suddenly the brig seemed to pause and tremble, then spring to a
great height, and the next moment he had the sensation of falling in a
dream, and heard Medbury's voice, faint, muffled, like a voice coming
from a great distance underground, screaming, "Hold hard! Hold hard!"
In a second of time, in the light of the foam that whitened the sea
to leeward, he saw the deck clearly: the men crouching low above the
life-lines; Medbury's face turned away, his hands grasping a line about
his waist, his body braced; and behind him, rising from his knees,
a man with uplifted arm about to strike. The next moment Drew threw
himself forward upon the man, and at the same instant was crushed
against the booby-hatch by a great weight of water. He was held there
till his ears roared and flashes of light snapped before his eyes and
his breath was almost gone; then he felt himself lifted and whirled
along for what seemed a great distance, with the body of the man he had
seized struggling in his grasp. He had at that moment the feeling that
his end had come, that he was being borne far from the garden with the
fountain, and from that other garden where he saw his mother kneeling
with a flower in her hand and her eyes turned up to him smilingly.
With these scenes standing out vividly in a dream where all things else
were strange unrealities, he was suddenly awakened to life by the crash
of his body against something cruelly hard, felt a sharp sting under
his arm, pressed it down tight, and fell to the deck alone.
Groping in the darkness, almost breathless, half-blinded by water,
he got to his feet and looked about him. He was standing by the lee
rail, but the man with whom he had struggled was gone, blotted out. He
remembered the sting in his side, and, lifting his hand to the place,
struck the haft of a knife that still clung to his coat. Dazed and
bewildered, he drew it out, and, holding it gingerly, staggered back to
Medbury.
The mate looked at him in astonishment.
"You here?" he called. "You'd better go below."
"I'm going," Drew answered. "I've had enough." With that he held out
the knife.
"Where'd you get that?" demanded the mate, taking it.
Clinging to the life-lines, Drew told his story briefly, and as clearly
as was possible in that shrieking gale, while Medbury turned the knife
over and over in his hand.
"It's that damn' steward's," he said. "He's the one I threw out. I
forgot him." His voice trailed off in the tumult of the storm, and Drew
leaned forward to catch the words; then somehow he understood that the
mate was asking about the steward.
"Gone," Drew shouted--"over the rail. I couldn't hold him."
"Damn' good thing," replied Medbury, and gently pushed him toward the
companionway.