A crash which shook him bodily brought Paul Lavelle upstanding from the
berth in the lounge. The daze of a heavy sleep clung to him. For an
instant he could not imagine where he was. He was in utter darkness.
There was another crash where the spanker boom slammed back from
starboard to port again. Then, the _Daphne_ lay over under the impact of
a vicious gust of wind.
It was the boom which had awakened the sleeper. He leaped out on deck to
find himself in a shapeless blackness. There was barely a breeze, but
the air was filled with eery noises. Overhead, overside, wherever he
turned, he heard them--snarls, whines, whimperings, and the creaking as
of huge pinions wheeling. A wolf pack might have been disputing a kill
with a horde of vultures.
The contrast of this with the exquisite moonlight night upon which
Lavelle had closed his eyes was appalling. He groped his way to the
wheel, which was in beckets to keep it from rolling, and peered into the
compass. An unconscious sigh of thankfulness for the forethought which
had made him light the binnacle lamp escaped from him. The _Daphne_ was
heading north by east. The gust of wind which had slammed the spanker
boom must have come out of the southeast. He faced that point. Another
gust confirmed the assumption. He ran into the lounge and struck a
match. The silver watch lay on the chart table. It said 1 o'clock. He
had not returned for this, but to see the barometer. It stood at 30:00;
just where it had hung all day.
But what he had not discovered by daylight he now saw in the flickering
match light. The barometer hand and the indicator were caught together.
His heart went cold, he lit another match and struck the bulkhead with
his clenched fist. The blow jarred the hand and indicator apart. The
delicate wisp of blue steel quivered at 30:00 for a breath. Then, it
began to fall. It reached 29:10 and clung. Even as the match went out it
recorded 29:00 and was still falling.
He had seen a mercurial barometer go from 29:30 to 26:03 in the _Kau
Lung_. That was a world's record!
Despair seized him. What could he and a lone woman do in a brute of a
vessel like this--undermanned even with twenty men before the mast?
"God Almighty, what have I done?" he cried aloud in agony of spirit.
A smash of wind from the south'ard was the answer he got.
He gritted his teeth and flung a curse at the sea:
"I'll beat you--you and all your foulness! You sneak!" he yelled at the
blackness.
He dropped down through the companionway, calling "Emily! Emily!"
There was no answer. She was asleep, poor girl, he thought. That was why
she had let him oversleep; why she had not called him when it turned
black.
"Emily! Emily! Where are you?"
Echoes answered him. Running forward, he saw the light beaming from the
derelict's room. As he reached the doorway he beheld the girl standing
beside the old man's berth, a book in her left hand and her right
uplifted.
"So help me God," the derelict was solemnly repeating after her.
As the last word came from his lips he discovered Lavelle.
"'Th' Prince'!" he cried and fell back, a hand at his brow in salute.
The book dropped from Emily's hand. She swayed where she stood. She had
fought and won a battle as brave as any field of war ever knew. Yet an
angry glance, which struck her and cut like a whiplash, was her reward.
"Why didn't you answer me when I called?" Lavelle demanded, but paused
not on an answer. "Get aft to that wheel! Go! Run! Keep her nor'east
until I can get back to you!"
With that he was gone from her. Like a soldier, without questioning,
without a word, she went aft to do what this man had bidden.
The fire under the donkey was dead when Lavelle got to the engine room.
It would take an hour to make steam. The barometer and his sea wisdom
told him that he had only minutes to prepare.
Whatever the battle was to be it was with his own hands that Paul
Lavelle must fight it. With this realization a terrific rage filled him.
It was fed with each breath that he snatched out of the blackness. The
sea was a personal enemy. Thus men who deal with it in long intimacy
come to visualize it. The sea was a sneak--a coward; always striking
below the belt.
Lavelle had squared the yards before he had gone aft in the evening,
leaving the braces slack so as to cast the _Daphne_ on the most
advantageous tack at the first coming of a breeze. He had expected a
wind from the north and west. Here it was out of the southeast. The
gusts which had roused him had struck the bark on the starboard quarter.
It had brought her to on that side. She was now forging ahead on the
starboard tack. As she rode she was under a double-reefed foresail,
reefed upper and lower fore and main topsails, foretopmast-staysail, and
inner or boom jib. The growing breeze lifted the slack out of the
starboard or weather braces. The lone worker in the darkness led the
falls of the lee braces to the main deck capstan and hove them in. And
wherever he went he belayed rope and line with a double hitch. There was
a finality about everything he did.
He set the maintopmast-staysail, hoisting it with the capstan. He would
ride her with that if it should be possible to heave her to after he had
located the bearing of the storm's center.
He ran aft only to stop at the entrance to the alleyway. He remembered
the boom jib.
"Too much headsail with a reefed spanker," he muttered.
He sped forward again, found the jib halyards, and let them go. As a
last touch of precaution he bent the jib downhaul to the
foretopmast-staysail clew as a preventer sheet.
Aft he sped again and through the cabin. A faint murmur came to him as
he ran by the derelict's room.
Out of the pile of slop-chest staff in the after cabin he snatched an
oilskin coat and sou'wester. He struggled into them as he climbed
through the companion way into this lounge.
A flash of a match brought the barometer's dial out of the blackness.
28:03!
An impulse to smash it for its trickery seized him. He forbore and
plunged outside. He thrust Emily away from the wheel. As he bent to peer
into the binnacle she shuddered at the rage which distorted his face.
Thus men, she thought, must look in battle with the blood lust upon
them. There was something primordial, relentless, about him. He was the
elemental man, sensate that a kill was at hand.
The _Daphne_ was heeling over, further and further, under the onslaught
of the rising wind.
The roughness with which Lavelle had pushed Emily away from the wheel
started a demon of resentment to life in her. Her arms were aching. It
had seemed that the wheel must draw them from their sockets while she
was alone. Steering the _Daphne_ while Lavelle had been forward had not
been the tame task of the afternoon.
She stood trembling where this man had shoved her. She could have struck
him.
"Get below! Close every port--every door! Jump! Then, come back and
light that lamp in the lounge!"
Anger swept her at his brutal tone. Tears blinded her. They were the
tears of a rage of which she had never believed herself capable, oho
could not move.
"Go--on!" he yelled.
A furious squall twisted the two words into a shriek.
A sea slopped over the weather quarter and ran hissing across the deck
to leeward. It sucked hungrily at the gold woman's feet and ankles. At
its touch her rage grew, but passed from the man at the wheel to the
sea. It was the sea that he hated, not her. It was the sea that she
hated. It was the sea that had spoken through him. The sea was his
enemy. It became in that moment personal to her--her enemy.
Thus the spirit of Lavelle reacted upon Emily Granville's. Could she
have seen her face at that instant she would have discovered in it the
same elemental, the same primitive passion, which had shocked her in
his.
The girl ran from the deck and below.
Lavelle saw her when she returned and lit the lamp in the lounge. She
wore a long oilskin. A sou'wester covered her head. Out of the tail of
his eye he caught her staring at the barometer. He noted it with a
thought that she had "some sense."
She came out to him and had to press her lips against his ear to make
him hear her message.
"Everything--closed--be--low! Barom--28:00!"
That was a fall of three-hundredths of an inch in less than ten minutes!
The _Daphne_ was in a trap. Somewhere near her--somewhere in the
southern quadrants of the compass between the east and the west--the
center of a storm was bearing down upon her. Whether the barometer was
lying or telling the truth was of little moment now. Lavelle knew he
could not be mistaken in the signs of a revolving storm. He knew the
meaning of the wolf-like noises and the wing creakings in the air; the
oily, sooty, sight-killing blackness. But one sign was absent and, even
as he noted this, it appeared--a sickening, brick-red coloring which
cuts the eyes acridly like hay smoke. It diffused itself through the
blackness without lessening the night's impenetrability. With its
coming the wind veered quickly from the S.S.E. into the south. By the
law of storms this change told the lone man arrayed against the sea that
the center was bearing upon the _Daphne_ eight points to the right, or
out of the S.S.W. The bark was trapped in the storm's advancing or
dangerous semicircle. He could not heave her to now. There was but one
thing to do: Run. Let the storm overtake the bark and catch her in its
vortex and--the sea must win. It depended alone on the _Daphne's_
worthiness and the hands and brain of the man at her helm to beat it.
With a full-manned ship the thing to do now was heave to. The enraged
man laughed to himself at the thought of his trying to do this alone.
By half-past two the wind had veered into the S.S.W. and was blowing a
whole gale. Taking it broad over the starboard quarter the _Daphne_ was
fleeing northeast. At times her helmsman was sure she was lifting free
of the mauling waters and hurtling through space. Again he felt that she
was bound headlong toward the quiet ooze; that no vessel could withstand
the onslaughts of wind and brine which were being rained upon her. But
never his rage at the sea grew less. It burned in him like a living
fire; it robbed him of all sense of fatigue.
Emily, sitting in the lounge and watching the barometer for any change,
saw the silver watch mark the hour when the day should have been
breaking. But no light rifted the blackness outside. The barometer hand
clung quivering at 28:00! The _Daphne's_ master--yes, her master,
too--had told her she must rest as much as she could. Not for her own
sake, but the battle's; that was his reason. "Because I may want to use
you!" was what he had yelled when she had put her ear up to his lips.
When the watch said six o'clock and there came no day, Emily suddenly
realized what a time had passed since Paul had taken the wheel from her
hands--four hours and a half. Not a bite had crossed lips in eleven
hours. It was impossible to get forward to the galley. As she admitted
this she remembered the canned provisions in the alleyway stateroom
opposite the derelict's. She recalled also the flour and biscuit barrels
in the starboard alleyway stateroom.
The gold woman went caroming down the companionway and through the
reeling saloons. The din of an hundred forges filled them. The
derelict's light was giving a last flicker. Daniel McGovern slept. As
the lamp went out Emily discovered her book on the floor and picked it
up. She put it on a shelf in the storeroom and fled with three cans
which she felt out of the darkness. She carried these up into the
lounge. One of the cans held corn--the others tomatoes. She dropped
below again and groped to the pantry. She was seeking water. There
wasn't a drop in the tank. The discovery staggered her. The man at the
wheel must drink. An idea of a substitute flashed into her mind. The
tomatoes would serve for food and drink. She located a hook under the
china racks and found a can opener she remembered having seen there.
As a glimmer of day asserted itself in the blackness, it found Emily
standing at the wheel beside Paul, holding a can of tomatoes up to his
lips so that he could drink when he dared. He managed to snatch two
mouthfuls. Then, the can was blasted out of the girl's hands. It
flattened itself against the mizzonmast. The tin cylinder might have
been a bit of cardboard. It held where it struck for a second, as if the
gale had imbedded it in the steel mast.
With this sudden growth in the fury of the gale came the slightest
increase of daylight. This light seemed to spring from the sea; not
from overhead. It was sufficient to trace what lay forward of the break
of the poop. Two tall, reeling masts with whalebone tips, the edges of
the rails, an outline of the top of the forward house, and the
forecastle head rising out of a roil of waters composed the suggestion
to Emily's mind that that part of the _Daphne_ was still there. And all
round were ragged peaks of water like the ice-crusted crests of mighty
mountains. They were Alps gone drunk. The _Daphne_ was hurtling from one
peak to another--smashing through them.
The light restored Lavelle's vision to enable him to read in one glance
the tally of the battle. But a ribband remained of the big mainsail
which he had been unable to furl. The fore-upper topsail had left only
its leech ropes behind. There was not a head sail left except the
foretopmast-staysail. This, the maintopmast-staysail, the reefed
foresail, the fore lower topsail, and the upper and lower main topsails
and the spanker still held. The fore and aft bridges were gone. A
twisted stanchion told where the standard compass had stood. The donkey
funnel, the galley stovepipe, and the empty boat-chocks were
missing--the top of the forward house was swept clean.
Scarcely had Lavelle's eyes made this assessment when the main upper
topsail went. It split with a shot-like crackling. A second later only a
wisp of canvas was left to tell that a sail had ever been bent to the
yard.
Anger burned in Emily at the sight. It was personal--the ravaging of
that sail. The gale flung a cry of protest back in her throat. The slope
of Paul's sou'wester hid his face from her. The point of a grim jaw was
all that she could see. Only his arms moved with the wheel in steadying
the bark's drive. Otherwise he might have been a fixture of the ship. It
was not enough to be near him. A yearning to hear his voice came upon
her; to look in his eyes; to read his thoughts. She caught him, jerking
his head to bring her nearer. She struggled up in the lee of him and
pressed her ear to his lips.
"--piece--bacco!"
That was all she heard. She did not understand for the moment what he
meant. Then, it dawned upon her wondering consciousness that he wanted a
piece of tobacco. A piece of tobacco! Her brain pounded on this as if it
would never let the thought go. She fought her way into the lounge, and
as she went she remembered a box of oaky, black slabs which she had seen
in the slop-chest litter. She had reached the bottom of the companion
way when the _Daphne_ gave a shuddering leap. It hurled the girl across
the saloon to leeward. She caught the knob of a stateroom door and
dragged herself from her knees to her feet. Looking forward, through the
port alleyway, she saw a flood of water pouring in through the door
opening out on the main deck.
Instinct carried Emily to this breach in the wall of the bark's defense.
She got her back to the door, like a woman of the Zuyder Zee warding a
broken dyke gate, and she closed it. The strength of the primitive
fighting man's woman was hers in the struggle which accomplished this.
She cried in anger as she bolted the teakwood slab against the ravaging
waters. Yet with this thing done, her first thought was that she must
get back to the wheel with a piece of tobacco. Going aft, she did not
notice that the derelict's berth was empty, but the man at the wheel
knew that the stranger was not there.
Hardly had Emily left the deck when the fore lower topsail went
tattering out of its bolt ropes. The _Daphne_ shook herself as if freed
from a leash. The man who watched nodded in approval. Had it been
possible for him to have cut this sail away when the main upper topsail
had gone he would have done it. In the moment that he nodded he saw the
flash of a man's face going over the rail in the welter to leeward. The
face was calm. Death seemed already to have masked it. It was the
derelict going away.
"Why, that--that's Driscoll--the quartermaster who was with me--stood by
me--the night the _Yakutat_ was lost!"
It was thus in the instant that the sea gulped Daniel McGovern that
recognition flashed into Paul Lavelle's mind. But as the thought formed
he put it away from him. His eyes were tricking him. A man can't stand
for six, seven, or eight hours--he had lost count of time--staring at a
compass card which whirls and dips like a crazy roulette wheel at Macao
and trust his sight. After Chang had spent a twelve-hour trick at the
_Kau Lung's_ wheel he had imagined many strange things. The
quartermaster, Driscoll, had been lost these ten years past--ten years
this very month of March. And the sea was trying to make him believe
that the derelict was he: endeavoring to trick his brain because it
couldn't beat him any other way. This thought refueled his rage.
The belly of the spanker split from head to foot with the sharp
staccato-rattling of a Gatling. The helmsman's senses apprehended it as
it happened. Before the _Daphne's_ head had fallen off half a point at
this sudden release of pressure on her after part Lavelle had met it.
Emily, struggling to force the lounge door open against the gale, saw
and heard the spanker go. It dazed her to note that Lavelle did not
glance up. She had to throw herself flat on the deck to get to the
wheel. Crawling up under Paul's lee she held the tobacco up in front of
him, keenly wondering what he meant to do with it. She had been able to
imagine only that he intended to use it in some mysterious way in
connection with the compass; perhaps to keep the card from rolling and
whirling. Paul settled the mystery quickly by wolfing a corner of the
black plug. He nodded with satisfaction as his jaws closed on it. It
seemed fantastic to the girl. She could have screamed in delight--she
who had loathed tobacco chewers as long as she could remember. The
incident was fraught with a message of hope that words could not have
conveyed.
By signs Paul made Emily understand that she was to fill and trim the
binnacle lamp. This task took her below to levy on the oil in the
derelict's lamp and the lamp in the medicine chest. Then it was she
discovered that Daniel McGovern had left the _Daphne_. She realized how
the alleyway door had come to be open, but at the time her senses were
beyond apprehending that a stranger had come out of the sea and gone
back to it. She levied upon the storerooms again and crawled up into the
lounge. The silver watch said noon. The barometer stood at 28:01! When
she tried to open the door and get back to Paul with food and this news,
she could not budge it more than an inch. The gale held it. She looked
out of the after weather port. Through the flying spume she saw Paul
glance up. His eyes rested on her for a second. He shook his head for
her to stay where she was.
There came a lull at three o'clock. Emily's recruited strength enabled
her to fight her way to the wheel with another can of tomatoes and some
crackers. She replaced the lighted binnacle lamp. It went out. Four
times she had to return to the lounge and relight it before she
succeeded in spiting the gale. As she straightened up finally in
success, she saw Paul's gaze shoot up to windward.
Not three hundred yards away and abreast of the _Daphne_ drove a big
four-masted, painted-port bark--a bulk of twenty-five hundred
tons--under a reefed foresail and a reefed main lower topsail. For a
breath her midship section hung poised on a peak of water, the rest of
her red underbody, fore and aft, clear of the welter. Her poles pierced
the lowering sky. The peak dropped from under her like the jet of a
fountain ceasing. She fell away into a cañon, wave-walled higher than
her tops. The wind went out of her foresail. The topsail drooped. She
paused in her flight like a wounded bird, reeled helplessly; and then
the wall of water over her stem fell, pooping her. A huddle of men
started from around the foot of her jiggermast. One of them in bright
yellow oilskins reached the doomed thing's port rail and waved to the
_Daphne_ high over him as if cheering her on. Another wall of water and
still a third crashed upon her. Her bows rose. Stern first she went down
to the port of missing ships, a hurricane shrieking her requiem.
In the twinkling of an eye, even as a trout snatches a fly, this proud
venture of man was; and then it was no more.
Brain-stunned, incapable of comprehension, Emily crawled round the
binnacle and got behind the lee side of the wheel. In a lull she heard
Paul yelling.
"--be--low! Eat--rest! Need--help--by and----"
She obeyed as one in a trance. As the lounge door banged behind her the
comparative quiet within, though it was a veritable orgy of sound,
enveloped her senses like a drug.
It was seven o'clock when she awoke. Through the weather port she saw
the yellow-colored head at the wheel touched by a gleam of the binnacle
light. Seventeen hours now he had been standing there like that. She
lighted the lounge lamp. The barometer stood at 28:00.
When she fought her way out to him with this word and shrieked it at him
he simply nodded that he heard.
"When--are--you--going to--let--me--help?"
She succeeded in crying this question into his ear in segments.
"Damn it! Shut--up!"
He cried this at her savagely.
In that instant the _Daphne_, paused slightly. A shiver went through
her. There was a crash which sounded even above the roar of the storm.
It was as if a masked battery had ambushed the bark from overhead. The
foretop-gallant mast and all its hamper and everything above the
crosstrees on the main were going by the board. A streak of lightning
illuminated the gale's work.
Emily found the end of the gasket with which Paul was lashed to the
wheel shaft. She tied it around her waist and took hold of the lee
wheel. It was her answer to his savagery. He saw what she did and he did
not send her away.
Thus, with never a word, they stood together for two hours during the
height of the storm, hurtling along the coast of eternity.
Of a sudden there came a rift in the clouds overhead. A shaft of
moonlight shot through the blackness and Paul's hand covered the gold
woman's in a gentle pressure where it clutched a spoke.
"--think--beaten--it!" he shouted at her presently, "--thirsty!"
Emily unlashed herself and brought him another can of tomatoes. She took
her post beside him again without a word. By midnight the gale's back
was broken. The sea kept dropping with the lessening of the wind. It was
long after dawn, however, when Paul unlashed himself from the wheel and
put Emily in his place.
"You take her now for a few minutes," he said in a broken husky voice.
"Going heave her to."
He started forward. His legs went out from under him. He struggled to
his feet only to drop again. He got up moaning and with a curse on his
lips. Clutching the rail he reeled down to the main deck.
Emily heard the palls of the capstan and then Paul's voice came to her
in a pathetic wail.
"Hard down! Hard down!" he cried, but it was a sweep of his arm which
carried his meaning to her. In obeyance she rolled the wheel over. The
_Daphne_ came round on her heel, until the maintopsail, flying aback,
hove her to.
Paul staggered aft again, balanced the wheel and put it in beckets.
"I'm pretty tired--tired," he said in a whisper. He crumpled in
exhaustion where he had fought for thirty hours. Blood oozed from the
ends of his swollen fingers. His eyes lay far back in his head. His
breath came in moans and sobs.