XV

It must have been four bells when the second mate found his way to

Medbury's side and told him that the captain wanted him.

"I'm to stay here," he added.

"Don't give them any let-up," Medbury shouted in his ear; "and lash

yourself fast. But don't give them any let-up."

He struggled aft, and put his hand on the captain's shoulder. In the

light of the binnacle-lamp he could see that the old man's face was set

and grim.

"Want me, sir?" he called, and bent his head to hear.

"Yes," he heard. The captain whirled the wheel, and then continued:

"Yes; go aloft; see if you can see the light on Culebra." He paused to

shift the wheel, straightened up again, and went on: "These seas run--a

little like shoaling water. I'd hate to run too far to the westward and

fetch up on the shoals beyond Culebra. Bad enough as 'tis. Take a good

look, and hurry back."

"All right, sir!" Medbury shouted, then made his way to the

main-rigging, and went slowly and carefully up. The wind flattened him

against the ratlines, so that it was with difficulty that he lifted

arms and knees; and when the brig swung to port, he seemed to be

clinging to the lower side of the rigging, so far did she roll down.

"Fetlock-shrouds all the way up," he muttered to himself. When he was

well above the obstructing lower topsail, he looked ahead.

Under him, near the vessel, the sea gleamed spectrally over its whole

surface, but farther away it was black. The mist had lifted, and he had

the impression, even in the darkness, of a wide horizon-line; but no

light was to be seen. He went upward again, till the crosstrees were

just above him, and looked once more.

He gazed long, sweeping the whole line of the sea ahead slowly, pausing

at each point, that he might not lose the flash. The strain brought the

tears to his eyes, and he wiped them with his sleeve and looked again.

Something in his dizzy altitude, in the task set him and its failure,

impressed him more than anything had yet done, and he began to lose

heart.

"Father went this way," he muttered, "and I guess it's good enough for

me. He was a better man than I am. Poor Hetty!" He looked for the light

again, giving all his thought to it. Then he sighed. "I wish to God,"

he went on, "that we'd let her be! She wouldn't have been here if we

hadn't teased her about China. I wish she was there. This is no way for

her to go--a girl like her." Then slowly at last he descended to the

deck.

At the wheel, Captain March was growing unutterably weary, and

something like the same thoughts were passing through his mind.

"Lord," he said, "I haven't ever been much of a praying man, and

I ain't going to begin now, when I can't shift for myself. I'd be

ashamed. You know I've tried to do right. I ain't afraid of death, but

I hate to lose the old boat. I've always had good luck, and I guess

I've kind o' got in the way of thinking it was going to last. I'd like

to have it. I rather expected to die at home, and be buried alongside

of mother. She thought of that a good deal." Of his wife and daughter

he would not trust himself to think.

He looked up as Medbury approached him, but turned his eyes away

immediately. He saw that Culebra light had not been sighted.

Medbury simply shook his head and stepped back, but the captain called

him nearer.

"I guess it's too early," he said. "Go up again soon, and if we haven't

made it then, we'll try to get a sounding. See if that steward left any

cold tea below, will you?"

As Medbury went down the companionway and into the pantry, a figure

came softly out of the girls' room and tiptoed across the cabin. It

was Hetty. As she neared the pantry, the swinging floor tripped her

and sent her flying into the room behind Medbury's back. She giggled

hysterically as he turned with a start.

"Good Lord, Hetty!" he exclaimed, "haven't you gone to sleep yet?"

"I couldn't sleep," she said plaintively. "I waited for you; I thought

you'd never come." She hesitated, laid her hand on his arm, and

continued slowly: "Now I want you to tell me the truth--the truth. I'm

not a child. I can bear it. I know we are in great danger--isn't it so?"

He hesitated and looked away, and she dropped her hand to her side.

"You needn't tell me; I know," she told him.

"We've got a chance," he now explained. "It looks bad, I know, but

we've got a chance. I guess we've got an even chance."

"We didn't think it would be like this when we left the harbor at home,

did we?" she continued. "It was like a spring day, and the buds were

getting red. I said the leaves would be full grown when we got back--I

said so to mother." She choked back a sob.

"Don't, dear!" he pleaded. "Don't! You shall see them yet. You shall

live to grow old among your trees, Hetty."

"But if I don't," she persisted, "and--anything happens, will you try

to get to me? I don't want to go alone, shut up down here."

"Yes," he answered solemnly; "I'll get to you. But we're going to pull

through--really."

"You will not forget!" she insisted.

He laughed softly.

"Do I ever forget you?" he asked

"No," she said; "no--and I am glad."

Then suddenly she flung her arms about his neck, pressed her cheek

against his, and vanished.

When Medbury reached the deck he took the wheel while the captain drank

a great draught of the clear, cold tea. Taking the wheel again, he said

something that Medbury could not understand.

"What's that, sir?" he asked, and leaned forward to catch the words.

"I said you were gone long enough. Thought the teapot had got adrift."

"Yes, sir," Medbury replied. "Didn't find it right away. That steward

never did leave things where you could put your hand right on them.

He--" Medbury paused. He was about to say that it was the last of the

steward's tea that the captain would ever drink, but changed his mind.

"I won't trouble the old man to-night," he said to himself. "Morning

will be time enough--if there is a morning."

The canvas screen above the taffrail had whipped itself free, and the

great seas, in long ridges that seemed never to break, followed the

vessel with vindictive hate. The gale beat the men down, the spray

blinded them; now and then a rush of wind, coming with great fury, with

a wailing cry that sprang upon them like Indians from ambush, pressed

them onward along the rolling seas without motion other than the

forward one. Then the wind, relaxing its hold, left the brig wallowing

exhausted in the deep hollows, like a collapsing thing.

It was after one of these outbursts that Medbury touched the captain's

arm.

"Going up again," he yelled, and pointed aloft.

The captain nodded, and Medbury slanted away.

He went up deliberately, turning his eyes neither to right nor to

left until he saw the crosstrees just overhead. Stopping, he thrust

a leg between the ratlines to steady himself, and gazed ahead once

more. It had grown lighter, and he could now plainly distinguish the

blurred line where sky and water met. Suddenly, far ahead, he saw a

little point of light grow out of the blackness of the night, flash

for a moment, and then disappear. His heart leaped in exultation, but

he waited, to be sure. Again it flashed and disappeared. Marking its

position well, he hurried to the deck and aft.

"It's ahead, sir," he shouted. "Bears a point off the starboard bow."

Captain March made no reply; his face was as immobile as a figurehead.

Whatever exultation he may have felt in the triumph of his reckoning,

he was never to show it.

By eight bells the light was abreast, and they had hauled up on their

course past Sail Rock. The gale was sweeping down through the passage,

with a threatening sea, and every bit of rigging roaring and piping to

the tune of the road. Suddenly, out of the blackness on their port bow

a dark shape loomed, and the rock stood up almost beside them. Without

changing the course a hair, they drew near, passed under its lee,

with the gale dropping for an instant and the staysails flapping, and

overhead, from the rock, the sound of startled sea-birds crying in the

night. Then the gale rushed down again, and sea and rigging roared once

more.

Medbury gave a sigh of wonder.

"Never heard anything like that before," he exclaimed.

"You can always hear them at night, if you go close enough," said the

captain.

"Well, it's stirring," replied Medbury. He walked to the rail and

scanned the sea with the glass. "Pity there isn't something more'n a

'bug light' on St. Thomas," he said to the captain as he walked over to

his side. "We might skip right in before daybreak."

Captain March glanced over the rail.

"By daybreak we'll not need St. Thomas light," he said dryly, and bent

to the wheel again.

"The old pirate!" muttered Medbury. "He's chartered for Santa Cruz, and

that's where he's going! There's five feet of water in the hold, and

a tearing gale loose, and a worn-out, hopeless crew; but he's going

to Santa Cruz! If the wind should flop around or fall, we'd go to the

bottom; but it won't. It wouldn't have the cheek--not with him. Well!"

The wind hauled over the quarter, and fell slightly; gradually the sea

grew pale, and spars and sails took on more definite shape; and then

all at once it was day, and they saw the sea whipped with foam, and

dark masses of purplish-black clouds hanging low, with dashes of gold

firing their edges in the east. St. Thomas had dropped behind them,

and far ahead the cone of Santa Cruz, gray and misty under the darker

clouds, was rising on the edge of the sea.

Day came on apace; the wind dropped a trifle more, but not until the

harbor of Christiansted took shape, with the anchored ships lying thick

in the roadstead, and the bright-hued little town clinging to the

hillside above the water's edge, did the captain allow the girls on

deck. As they ascended at last, white but happy, and looked out of the

companionway, glancing eagerly about them, the gray, worn vessel, the

dark, low-hanging clouds, the wind-swept sea, appalled them, and for a

moment they could not speak.

"Eet iss not lak home," murmured the Danish girl; "eet iss mos' sad

and mos' des_o_late."

"But it's land," cried Hetty--"land after that awful sea!"

They were silent for a moment and abstracted, gazing with curious eyes

at the land rising under the bow. Suddenly Miss Stromberg seized her

companion's arm.

"Ah!" she cried, "doze flag--yonner!" She pointed where the red,

white-crossed ensign of Denmark flapped straight out in the gale above

the little white fort at the water's edge. "And op by doze tall tree,"

she went on eagerly, "iss ma gahden--wiz yellow wall, and doze red

tiles beyon'. Now eet iss shuah-lee home."

"It will be beautiful when the sun shines--Christiansted," said Hetty.

Medbury, going forward, stopped a moment by the main-rigging, where

Drew stood alone. The pumps were quiet as they made harbor, and the

crew were forward. Drew was watching them with curious eyes. He

glanced up as Medbury drew near, and spoke.

"What will be done with them?" he asked in a low voice.

"With what?" asked Medbury.

"With the crew. Wasn't it technically and actually mutiny?"

Medbury laughed.

"It was a beautiful fight," he said; then remembering their talk early

on the voyage, he added: "Call it a case of brutality, if you like; but

it seemed necessary."

"But the men's part," persisted Drew--"will they not be punished?"

"Man alive!" said Medbury, "they had been standing many hours at those

pumps and working as they'd never worked before--with no hope. That's

punishment enough, isn't it? They're tired now, and very humble, and,

I guess, if the truth could be told, pretty thankful to me. It wasn't

mutiny; it was a funk. They simply gave up, that's all. But if the old

man had done it, you wouldn't be looking into Christiansted roadstead

this morning. There's a man for you!" His voice changed as he added:

"And if it hadn't been for you, God knows where I'd be now. Over the

rail somewhere, with the steward's pretty little trinket in my back. I

haven't said much; but I guess you know I'm not going to forget it."

"Do the ladies know?" asked Drew. He had not mentioned his own slight

scratch.

"They know he was swept overboard," the mate replied. "I guess they

needn't know any more at present." Then he went forward.

Rolling heavily, low above the sea, white with salt, but with the speed

of the gale in her rain-blackened sails, the brig flashed past the

shipping, crowded with wondering sailors, and drove straight for the

rocky beach where the cocoanut-palms came down to the shore, and on hot

mornings the negro washer-women lay their wet clothes upon the smooth

rocks, and the roadstead resounds with the echoing beat of their wooden

paddles. Then all at once Captain March's voice rang out, and with

sails shaking in the wind the _Henrietta C. March_ shot toward a narrow

ribbon of sand on the shore, struck, rolled slowly, and with a long,

grating sigh came safely to land.

An hour later, as Medbury walked aft, he mounted the steps to

the poop-deck before he saw the flutter of Hetty's dress by the

main-rigging. She was looking steadily out to sea.

He stopped by her side.

"Here on this side, when you can see the town on the other!" he

exclaimed. "Haven't you had enough of the sea?"

She looked up and smiled.

"I was looking beyond the sea--as far as home," she said.

"Are you homesick?"

"No; only thinking of it."

"It's a good thing to think of," he said soberly.

"'East, west,

Hame's best.'