Black Pawl was right. There was wind coming, and plenty of it--too much
of it. It began cheerfully enough--just a brisk breeze across a sunlit
sea. But the clouds that poked up above the horizon were not cheerful;
and when they obscured the sun, and the rain began to drive across the
<i>Deborah’s</i> decks, Black Pawl had the canvas coming in. It was time. The
first squall caught them under jib and topsails; and the foretopsail
went with a crack and a splinter and a whipping tear of canvas. The
topmast was broken off short, and dangled and slatted back and forth;
and the fore rigging, thus slacked, worked itself into a swift and
dangerous confusion.
Black Pawl had been careless; and he knew it, and knew the affair was
fault of his and not of the mates. He was just enough to blame himself
and no one else. He went forward himself, a tower of strength, and
helped clear away the tangle and cut loose the wreckage and make all
secure; by that time the full strength of wind and rain was lashing
them, and they hove to, to ride it out. Every hatch was closed and fast;
the scuttles over the fo’c’stle and steerage and cabin companions were
shut and secured, and were opened only when some one came up on deck or
went below. The deck-litter was stowed; life-lines were strung fore and
aft; and the boats were lashed more securely on their bearers.
A whaling vessel, and even a whaling schooner, is built not for speed
but for strength. The <i>Deborah</i> was cut square across the stern; and her
bows were blunt, meeting at a right angle under the bowsprit. The waves
struck her with shattering, jarring blows. She was heavy with her store
of oil in the casks below; and she rose sluggishly to the seas. But she
was stout as she was heavy; the thundering waves could not start her
timbers. Given proper handling, she would ride any sea and weather any
storm.
It was nightfall before all was fast and secure. Black Pawl had held the
deck all day; he held it the night through, while the pressure of the
gale waxed steadily, until a man could not stand without support in the
face of the wind. It was like a giant’s hand that pushed against their
chests; they crouched to it, clutching hand-holds, taking the lee of
every shelter that offered.
Some water came over the <i>Deborah’s</i> sluggish bows during the first day
and night. Toward dawn a mightier wave climbed bodily inboard, over the
knight’s-heads. The heavy windlass and bitts, made for sternest toil,
broke the first force of the wave, and saved the fo’c’stle scuttle; but
the cable-boxes just aft of the foremast were ripped bodily from the
deck and slung back the length of the vessel like cannon-balls in the
deluge of water. There was one man on deck forward. He held to the
windlass till the water had passed him by. Black Pawl and his son were
on the quarter, with a third man helping them at the wheel. They were
all half drowned; and the wave and the cable-boxes carried away the
stern boat and the spare equipment on the skids there. In the darkness
Black Pawl shouted, and his son and the seaman answered. So they stuck
to their task, and in an hour the black of night faded to the lifeless
gray of day; and the sheeting rain lashed and bit at them.
That day through, and hour by hour, the storm grew worse. Ruth and the
missionary kept the cabin, by Black Pawl’s orders. The Captain never
left the deck; and Dan Darrin and the mate took turns and watches with
him there. At noon of that day the galley was smashed by a wave that
came over the side; and thereafter plates and knives and pans sifted
overside with each fresh rush of water. Black Pawl laughed in the teeth
of the storm, and howled to Dan Darrin:
“She’s stripped clean as a hound, now, ready to fight.”
“Aye,” Dan told him. “And she’s a fighter.”
That second night was the worst. The tempest reached its highest pitch
at dusk; but there was no slackening of its strength as the night wore
through. Black Pawl could only tell his mates, from hour to hour, that
it was no worse. “The break will come,” he shouted into the storm; and
the wind whipped his words away as though it mocked and played with him.
Black Pawl ate little while the gale endured. No man could eat, on that
racking, pitching deck. He kept up his strength with whisky, raw from
the bottle; and the stuff burned into his blood and warmed him and
numbed him.
Dan Darrin remonstrated with him more than once. “Let that be; and put
red victuals into you, sir,” he urged. But Black Pawl laughed at him.
“This is my meat,” he told Dan, lifting the bottle. “This is mine; you
stick to yours.”
Dan had never seen him so strong, so powerful and so sure. It was as
though he fought the fury of wind and sea, alone, breasting the tempest
for the sake of those aboard the schooner, and protecting them with his
own strong body. It was like a personal triumph in battle for Black Pawl
when on the third morning the wind perceptibly slackened, and the
ravenous teeth of the waves became blunted and dull.
Nevertheless all that day and all that night the <i>Deborah</i> was rocked
and swung and racked in the hammock of the seas; and it was not till the
fourth day that they saw the sun through the graying clouds, and Black
Pawl got a sight at her. On this last day, the Captain had eaten
something; but he had not left the deck, and he had not slept. “There’s
land hereabouts,” he told Dan Darrin when Dan protested. “I’ll rest
when I know just where we are--and not before.”
They were able, by this time, to take some stock of the damage the storm
had done. At first glimpse, the <i>Deborah</i> was a derelict, shattered and
helpless. But that was to the casual and ignorant eye. True, the
bowsprit was split, the foremast sprung, the rigging broken here and
there, and hopelessly snarled forward. But the mainmast was as stoutly
seated as before the tempest; and they were taking no water save the
normal leakage of a healthy ship. The hull was sound.
“However,” Black Pawl decided, when he knew what there was to know,
“however, we’re in no trim for the long way ahead. We’ll make land, Dan,
and put in a day or so in fetching her back to shape again. It’s no
great job; and it’s got to be done.”
Dan agreed with him. A whaler carries in herself everything she is
likely to need in three or four years away from home, save only food and
firewood. They could find shelter among the islands and repair the
rigging and strengthen or replace the split bowsprit and the racked
foremast. They would want sticks that could be counted on in the rough
waters about the Horn.
When they got their sight at the sun, and Black Pawl pricked their
location upon the chart, he nodded with satisfaction and clapped Dan on
the back. “No more than half a day’s run,” he told the second mate.
“There’s shelter, and water, and islanders to help us if we need. Run
her in, Dan--you and Red Pawl. I’m minded to sleep a bit before we’re
there.”
They made the island at late dusk, but Red Pawl would not try the
passage into the lagoon in the dark, and he stood off and on till
morning. Then they worked in, and anchored a mile or more offshore.
There was no town there--the place was little more than a coral atoll;
but there were a few native huts. And there was the shelter they needed
for their own security while they made their repairs. The mate set the
work afoot as soon as the anchor was in the mud; and he and Dan Darrin
drove them, while Black Pawl slept roundly in his cabin below.
The Captain slept the clock around, and woke at noon; and he woke in the
after-grip of the whisky he had drunk. His body was burning and sick
and sore; his eyes were hot as coals in his head; his lips were parched
and swollen, and his mouth did not taste like his own mouth to him. He
woke, and groaned, and rolled to the floor and dressed himself; and in a
black mood he came out into the cabin and found whisky and drank again.
The reaction from his battle with the storm affected Black Pawl in two
ways. His soul was sunk in a vast depression; he could see no light nor
glory in the world. But his body was hot with the intoxication of
victory, and a more tangible drunkenness. He was in a mood to damn the
world; and when he saw Red Pawl, he hated his son; and when he saw Ruth
Lytton, he cursed her in his heart. Sight of Red Pawl brought back his
old misery of disappointment in this man whom he had fashioned. Sight of
the girl brought back the memory of the picture she had made in Dan
Darrin’s arms. Why should it be Dan Darrin? Was he not a better man than
Darrin? The girl was a fool. She could never be afraid of him, she had
said. He told himself she might be taught that fear.
On deck, Black Pawl found fault with the fashion of one of Red Pawl’s
orders to the men; and Red answered him hotly. Black Pawl knocked him
down with a furious blow. Red Pawl picked himself up and nursed his
anger; and the Captain hated Red, and hated himself the more, and hated
the world most of all. There was no laughter in him to-day; he was
ghastly white, his eyes sank in their sockets--not a man to cross with
impunity.
The girl watched him commiseratingly; and once she came to him and said:
“Cap’n Pawl, don’t you want to go below, and sleep? You do need the
rest, you know.”
“I’m sick of sleeping,” he told her curtly.
The missionary joined his urgency to the girl’s. “You’ll be ill, sir,”
he said. “You’ve won the fight; the ship’s safe. Take your rest.”
Black Pawl jeered at him. “Keep to your gods, Father,” he said. “What do
you know of the needs of men?”
“I know that men need God,” said the missionary. “And--never man more
than you, Black Pawl.”
“Get out of my way,” Black Pawl commanded. “I spurn your God!” And as
the missionary moved quietly to one side, he added with a hint of the
old mockery: “Now, there, Father. If there were a God, would He not
strike me down for that blasphemy?”
“God strikes when He wills,” said the missionary. “It is never necessary
to dare Him.”
Black Pawl’s laughter was hollow; he cursed and swung away down the
deck.
That was mid-afternoon. Till dark the men worked on the <i>Deborah’s</i>
repairs. That night Black Pawl kept his cabin. He was drinking steadily.
He sought oblivion. But the liquor would not bite, and he cursed the
feeble stuff, even as he poured it down his throat. He did not sleep.
Once he got up and prowled through the cabin. On the cabin table there
was a scarf, a light thing that Ruth Lytton had dropped there. Black
Pawl lifted it and ran it through his hands, head bowed; and his
thoughts were ugly. In the end his teeth set, and he tore the thing to
bits in his hands.
In the morning Red Pawl came to him. The mate said they must go ashore
and hew out timbers to make a rough splint for the bowsprit. Black Pawl
laughed in his face. “Aye, and ashore you’ll teach my men to be rid of
me, I doubt,” he accused.
Red Pawl gave back no word, but there was a flat defiance in his eyes.
The Captain waved his hand. “Go along,” he said. “I’ll send Darrin and
his men as well.”
“I’m not needing them,” said Red Pawl.
“I say they go,” Black Pawl roared at him; the mate turned away without
further dissent.
When the Captain went on deck a little later, he found the boats in the
water alongside, ready to start for the island. The missionary and the
girl were there. The missionary came to Black Pawl and said:
“I want to go and see these natives, if you’ve no objection, sir.”
“Go. Tell them about your God,” Black Pawl laughed at him. They were all
going, leaving him. He felt, suddenly, very lonely; and then he thought
with a fierce and ugly triumph: “But she’s not going--not the girl.
She’ll be here with me.”
He saw that she was preparing to enter Dan Darrin’s boat; and he went
toward her and said, with something like entreaty in his voice: “Stay
aboard with me, Ruth. Will you not?”
She smiled at him and said at once: “Of course, if you want me.”
“I do,” he told her.
The missionary hesitated, as though he were unwilling to leave them
together. “Shall I stay?” he suggested.
“No; no, go--you and your God!” Black Pawl told him harshly. The
missionary looked toward Ruth; she nodded, and he stepped down into the
boat.
They watched the two craft pull away from the schooner’s side. And Black
Pawl saw that Spiess was at the after oar in Red Pawl’s boat; and he saw
Red lean to whisper to the man. The Captain’s lips twisted with pain at
the sight, as though Red had stabbed him. He knew, by now, that Red
meant murder. Well, then, why did he not strike?
“Dan’s boat is going faster; he’s beating,” said Ruth, at his side; and
Black Pawl looked down at her, and his eyes were hot. He glanced along
the deck. There were two men forward; the cook was working in the litter
and wreckage of his galley. Save for these three, he and the girl were
the only persons left upon the <i>Deborah</i>.
Sick of life, sick of decency, sick of hope and striving, he surrendered
to the devils that besieged him. Damn the girl! She should learn to be
afraid before he was done with her.
“Come below,” he said to her. “I’m a mind to lie down.”