"What are they doing? What are they doing?" I sung out. "Can't you see?"
I shook his leg as I spoke. But at my touch, the old idiot--as I thought
him at the moment--began to shout in a frightened voice:
"Oh! oh! help! hel--!"
"Shut up!" I bellowed. "Shut up, you old fool. If you won't do anything,
let me get past you."
Yet he only cried out the more. And then, abruptly, I caught the sound
of a frightened clamour of men's voices, away down somewhere about the
maintop--curses, cries of fear, even shrieks, and above it all, someone
shouting to go down on deck:
"Get down! get down! down! down! Blarst--" The rest was drowned in a
fresh outburst of hoarse crying in the night.
I tried to get past old Jaskett; but he was clinging to the rigging,
sprawled on to it, is the best way to describe his attitude, so much of
it as I could see in the darkness. Up above him, Stubbins and Plummer
still shouted and cursed, and the shrouds quivered and shook, as though
the two were fighting desperately.
Stubbins seemed to be shouting something definite; but whatever it was,
I could not catch.
At my helplessness, I grew angry, and shook and prodded Jaskett, to make
him move.
"Damn you, Jaskett!" I roared. "Damn you for a funky old fool! Let me
get past! Let me get past, will you!"
But, instead of letting me pass, I found that he was beginning to make
his way down. At that, I caught him by the slack of his trousers, near
the stern, with my right hand, and with the other, I got hold of the
after shroud somewhere above his left hip; by these means, I fairly
hoisted myself up on to the old fellow's back. Then, with my right, I
could reach to the forrard shroud, over his right shoulder, and having
got a grip, I shifted my left to a level with it; at the same moment, I
was able to get my foot on to the splice of a ratline and so give myself
a further lift. Then I paused an instant, and glanced up.
"Stubbins! Stubbins!" I shouted. "Plummer! Plummer!"
And even as I called, Plummer's foot--reaching down through the gloom--
alighted full on my upturned face. I let go from the rigging with my
right hand, and struck furiously at his leg, cursing him for his
clumsiness. He lifted his foot, and in the same instant a sentence from
Stubbins floated down to me, with a strange distinctness:
"_For God's sake tell 'em to get down hon deck!_" he was shouting.
Even as the words came to me, something in the darkness gripped my
waist. I made a desperate clutch at the rigging with my disengaged right
hand, and it was well for me that I secured the hold so quickly, for the
same instant, I was wrenched at with a brutal ferocity that appalled me.
I said nothing, but lashed out into the night with my left foot. It is
queer, but I cannot say with certainty that I struck anything; I was too
downright desperate with funk, to be sure; and yet it seemed to me that
my foot encountered something soft, that gave under the blow. It may
have been nothing more than an imagined sensation; yet I am inclined to
think otherwise; for, instantly, the hold about my waist was released;
and I commenced to scramble down, clutching the shrouds pretty
desperately.
I have only a very uncertain remembrance of that which followed. Whether
I slid over Jaskett, or whether he gave way to me, I cannot tell. I know
only that I reached the deck, in a blind whirl of fear and excitement,
and the next thing I remember, I was among a crowd of shouting, half-mad
sailor-men.