orders!” he shouted, and though his dyed skin was dark and he wore the
garb of the common sailor, he spoke with the unmistakable tone of the
master mariner. The second mate ran to the line and took charge.
“This is a bucking bronco, all right!” muttered Mayo. “But it's for the
honor of the steamboat men! I'll show this gang!”
He poised himself for a few moments on the crotch of the boom, clinging
to the cringles of the luff--the short ropes with which the sail is
reefed.
As he stood there, gathering himself for his desperate undertaking,
waiting for opportunity, taking the measure of the lashing and insensate
monster whom he had resolved to subdue, he heard Captain Downs bawl an
impatient command:
“Passengers go below!”
Mayo looked aft and saw Alma Marston clinging to the spike-rack of the
spanker mast. The coach-house lantern shone upon her white face.
“Go below!” repeated the master.
She shook her head.
“This is no place for a woman.”
“The vessel is going to sink!” she quavered.
“The schooner is all right. You go below!”
How bitter her fear was Mayo could not determine. But even at his
distance he could see stubborn resolution on her countenance.
“If I've got to die, I'll not die down there in a box,” she cried. “I'm
going to stay right here.”
Captain Downs swore and turned his back on her. Apparently he did not
care to come to a real clinch with this feminine mutineer.
The great spar crashed out to the extent of its arc, and the sail
volleyed with it, ballooning under the weight of the wind. The
reef-points were no longer within Mayo's reach. He ran along the boom,
arms outspread to steady himself, and was half-way to its end before the
telltale surge under him gave warning. Then he fell upon the huge stick,
rolled under it, and shoved arms and legs under the foot of the sail.
Barely had he clutched the spar in fierce embrace before it began its
return journey. It was a dizzy sweep across the deck, a breath-taking
plunge.
When the spar collided with the stays he felt as if arms and legs would
be wrenched from his body. He did not venture to move or to relax his
hold. He clung with all his strength, and nerved himself for the return
journey. He had watched carefully, and knew something of the vagaries
of the giant flail. When it was flung to port the wind helped to hold
it there until the resistless surge of the schooner sent it flying wild
once more. He knew that no mere flesh and blood could endure many
of those collisions with the stays. He resolved to act on the next
oscillation to port, in order that his strength might not be gone.
“See that the cable runs free!” he screamed as he felt the stick lift
for its swoop.
He swung himself upward over the spar the moment it struck, and the
momentum helped him. He ran again, steadying himself like a tight-wire
acrobat. He snatched the noose from his shoulders, slipped it over
the end of the boom, and yelled an order, with all the strength of his
lungs:
“Pull her taut!”
At that instant the boom started to swing again.
Standing on the end of the spar, he was outboard; the frothing sea was
under him. He could not jump then; to leap when the boom was sweeping
across the deck meant a skinful of broken bones; to wait till the boom
brought up against the stays, so he realized, would invite certain
disaster; he would either be crushed between the boom and shrouds or
snapped far out into the ocean as a bean 'is filliped by a thumb. On the
extreme end of the spar the leverage would be so great that he could not
hope to cling there with arms and legs.
A queer flick of thought brought to Mayo the phrase, “Between the devil
and the deep sea.” That flying boom was certainly the devil, and the
foaming sea looked mighty deep.
Her weather roll was more sluggish and Mayo had a moment to look about
for some mode of escape.
He saw the sail of “number four” mast sprawling loose in its lazy-jacks,
unfurled and showing a tumbled expanse of canvas. When he was inside the
rail, and while the boom was gathering momentum, he took his life in his
hands and his grit between his teeth and leaped toward the sail. He made
the jump just at the moment when the boom would give him the most help.
He heard Captain Downs's astonished oath when he dove over that worthy
mariner's head, a human comet in a twenty-foot parabola.
He landed in the sail on his hands and knees, yelling, even as he
alighted: “Catch her, boys!”
They did it when the spar banged against the stays. They surged on the
rope, tightened the noose, and before the vessel rolled again had made
half a dozen turns of the free end of the cable around the nearest
cleats.
Mayo scrambled down from the sail and helped them complete the work of
securing the spar. He passed near Captain Downs when the job had been
finished.
“Well,” growled the master of the _Alden_, “what do you expect me to say
to that?”
“I simply ask you to keep from saying something.”
“What?”
“That a steamboat man can't earn his pay aboard a wind-jammer, sir. I
don't like to feel that I am under obligations in any way.”
The master grunted.
“And if the little thing I have done helps to square that break I made
by licking your passenger I'll be glad of it,” added Mayo.
“You needn't rub it in,” said Captain Downs, carefully noting that there
was nobody within hearing distance. “When a man has been in a nightmare
for twenty-four hours, like I've been, you've got to make some
allowances, Captain Mayo. This is a terrible mixed-upmess.” He squinted
at the mizzen rigging where the lanterns revealed the damage. “And by
the way those backstays are ripped out, and seeing how that mast is
wabbling, this schooner is liable to be about as badly mixed up as the
people are on board of her.”
Mayo turned away and went back to his work. They were rigging
extra stays for the mizzenmast. And he noted that the girl near the
coach-house door was staring at him with a great deal of interest. But
in that gloom he was only a moving figure among toiling men.
An hour later the mate ordered the oil-bags to be tied to the catheads.
The bags were huge gunny sacks stuffed with cotton waste which was
saturated with oil.
In spite of the fact that her spanker, double-reefed, was set in order
to hold her up to the wind, weather-vane fashion, the schooner seemed
determined to keep her broadside to the tumbling seas. The oil slick
helped only a little; every few moments a wave with spoondrift flying
from it would smash across the deck, volleying tons of water between
rails, with a sound like thunder. At these times the swirling torrent in
the waist would reach to a man's knees.
Mayo did not take his watch below. The excitement of his recent
experience had driven away all desire for sleep, and the sheathing in
the fo'c'sle was squawking with such infernal din that only a deaf man
could have remained there in comfort.
However, he was not uneasy in regard to the safety of the schooner. In
a winter gale, with ice caking on her, he would have viewed their
situation in different light. But he had frequently seen the seas
breaking over the wallowing coal-luggers when he had passed them at
anchor on the coast.
He made a trip of his own along the main-deck, scrambling upon the spars
to avoid the occasional deluge which swept her amidship. The battened
hatches were apparently withstanding the onslaughts of the waves. He
could feel less weight in the wind. It was apparent that the crisis of
the blow had passed. The waves were not so savage; their crests were not
breaking. But just then the second mate rushed past, and Mayo overheard
the report he gave the captain, who was pacing the lee alley:
“The mizzenmast is getting more play, sir. I'm afraid it's raising the
devil with the step and ke'lson.”
“Rig extra stays and try her again for water,” ordered the master.
Mayo, returning to the mizzen, found the entire crew grouped there.
The mast was writhing and groaning in its deck collar, twisting its
coat--the canvas covering at its foot where it entered the deck.
The dusky faces were exhibiting much concern. They had flocked where the
ship was dealing herself a wound; the sailor sixth sense of impending
trouble had drawn them there.
“Four of you hustle aloft and stand ready to make fast those stays!”
commanded the first mate.
“Rest of you make ready tackle!” shouted the second mate, following
close on Mayo's heels.
The negroes did not stir. They mumbled among themselves.
“Step lively!” insisted the mate.
“'Scuse us, but dat mast done goin' to tumble down,” ventured a man.
“Aloft with you, I say!”
Just then the schooner slatted herself on a great roller, and
the starboard stays snapped, one after the other, like mammoth
fiddle-strings. The mast reeled and there was an ominous sound below the
deck.
“She done put a hole into herself!” squealed a sailor.
In the gloom their eyes were gleaming with the fires one beholds in the
eyes of frightened cats.
“Dere she comes!” shouted one of them. He pointed trembling finger.
Over the coamings of the fore-hatch black water was bubbling.
Yelping like animals, the sailors stampeded aft in a bunch, bowling over
Mayo and the mates in their rush.
“Stop 'em, captain!” bellowed the first mate, guessing their intent.
He rose and ran after them. But fright gave them wings for their
heels. They scampered over the roof of the after-house, and were on the
quarter-deck before the skipper was out of the alley. They leaped into
the yawl which was swung at the stern davits.
“You renegades!” roared the master. “Come out of that boat!”
With the two mates at his heels he rushed at them. They grabbed three
struggling men by the legs and dragged them back. But the negroes
wriggled loose, driven to frantic efforts by their panic. They threw
themselves into the boat again.
“Be men!” clamored Mayo, joining the forces of discipline. “There's a
woman aboard here!”
But the plea which might have affected an Anglo-Saxon did not prevail.
Their knives were out--not for attack on their superiors, but to slash
away the davit tackle.
“Come on, boys! Throw 'em out!” shouted the master, leading the way into
the yawl over the rail.
His two mates and Mayo followed, and the engineer, freshly arrived from
forward, leaped after them. But as fast as they tossed a man upon the
quarter-deck he was up and in the boat again fighting for a place.
“Throw 'em overboard!” roared the master, venting a terrible oath. He
knocked one of the maddened wretches into the sea. The next moment the
captain was flat on his back, and the sailors were trampling on him.
Most of the surges came riding rail-high; sometimes an especially
violent wave washed the deck aft.
Following it, a chasm regularly opened under the vessel's counter, a
swirling pit in the ocean twenty feet deep.
There was good fortune as well as misfortune in the affair of the yawl.
When at last it dropped it avoided the period of the chasm.
In spite of the efforts of the captain and his helpers the sailors
succeeded in slashing away the davit tackle. A swelling roller came
up to meet the boat as the last strand gave way and swept it, with its
freight, out into the night. But as it went Mayo clutched a davit pulley
and swung in midair.
The dizzy depths of the sea opened under him as he dangled there and
gazed down.
An instant later all his attention was focused on Alma Marston, who
stood in the companionway clutching its sides and shrieking out her
fears. The lantern showed her to him plainly. Its radiance lighted him
also. He called to her several times, angrily at last.
“Where is that man, Bradish?” he demanded, fiercely.
It seemed as if his arms would be pulled out. He could not reach the
davit iron from where he hung; the schooner's rail was too far away,
though he kicked his feet in that direction.
“Don't be a fool! Stop that screaming,” he told her. “Can Bradish!”
“He is sick--he--he--is frightened,” she faltered.
“Come out here! Pull on that rope! Swing me in, I can't hold on here
much longer. Do you want to see me drown?”
She came along the rail, clinging to it.
“No, not that rope! The other one! Pull hard!”
She obeyed, fighting back her fear. The davit swung inward slowly, and
he managed to slide his legs up over the rail and gain the deck.
“Thank you!” he gasped. “You're quite a sailor!”
He had been wondering what his first words to her would be. Even while
he swung over the yawning depths of the sea the problem of his love was
so much more engrossing than his fear of death that his thoughts were
busy with her. He tried to speak to her with careless tone; it had been
in his mind that he would speak and bow and walk away. But he could not
move when she opened her eyes on him. She was as motionless as he--a
silent, staring pallid statue of astounded fright. The rope slipped
slowly from her relaxing fingers.
“Yes! It's just the man you think it is,” he informed her, curtly. “But
there's nothing to be said!”
“I must say something--”
But he checked her savagely. “This is no place to talk over folly! It's
no place to talk anything! There's something else to do besides talk!”
“We are going to die, aren't we?” She leaned close to him, and the
question was hardly more than a whisper framed by her quivering lips.
“I think so,” he answered, brutally.
“Then let me tell you--”
“You can tell me nothing! Keep still!” he shouted, and drew away from
her.
“Why doesn't Captain Downs come back after us?”
“Don't be a fool! The sea has taken them away.”
They exchanged looks and were silent for a little while, and the
pride in both of them set up mutual barriers. It was an attitude which
conspired for relief on both sides. Because there was so much to say
there was nothing to say in that riot of the sea and of their emotions.
“I won't be a fool--not any more,” she told him. There was so distinctly
a new note in her voice that he stared at her. “I am no coward,” she
said. She seemed to have mastered herself suddenly and singularly.
Mayo's eyes expressed frank astonishment; he was telling himself again
that he did not understand women.
“I don't blame you for thinking that I am a fool, but I am not a
coward,” she repeated.
“I'm sorry,” stammered the young man. “I forgot myself.”
“There is danger, isn't there?”
“I'm afraid the mast has pounded a bad hole in her. I must run forward.
I must see if something can't be done.”
“I am going with you.” She followed him when he started away.
“You must stay aft. You can't get forward along that deck. Look at the
waves breaking over her!”
“I am going with you,” she insisted. “Perhaps there is something that
can be done. Perhaps I can help.”
The girl was stubborn, and he knew there was no time for argument.
Three times on their way forward he was obliged to hold her in the hook
of his arm while he fought with the torrent that a wave launched upon
the deck.
There was no doubt regarding the desperate plight of the schooner. She
was noticeably down by the head, and black water was swashing forward
of the break of the main-deck. The door of the galley was open, and the
one-eyed cook was revealed sitting within beneath a swinging lantern. He
held a cat under his arm.
“Bear a hand here, cook!” called Mayo.
But the man did not get off his stool.
“Bear a hand, I say! We've got to rig tackle and get this long-boat
over.”
The schooner's spare boat was in chocks between the foremast and the
main. Mayo noted that it was heaped full of spare cable and held the
usual odds and ends of a clutter-box. He climbed in hastily and gave a
hand to the girl to assist her over the rail.
“It will keep you out of the swash,” he advised her. “Sit there in the
stern while I toss out this truck.”
But she did not sit down. She began to throw out such articles as her
strength could manage.
Again Mayo hailed the cook, cursing him heartily.
“Oh, it ain't any use,” declared the man, with resignation. “We're
goners.”
“We aren't gone till we go, you infernal turtle! Come here and pitch
in.”
“I hain't got no heart left for anything. I never would have believed
it. The Old Man going off and saving a lot of nigger sailors instead of
me--after all the vittles I've fixed up for him. If that's the kind of
gratitude there is in the world, I'm glad I'm going out of it. Me and
the cat will go together. The cat's a friend, anyway.”
Mayo lost his temper then in earnest. All his nature was on edge in that
crisis, and this supine surrender of an able-bodied man whose two hands
were needed so desperately was peculiarly exasperating. He leaped out of
the boat, ran into the galley, and gave the cook an invigorating beating
up with the flat of his hands. The cook clutched his cat more firmly,
braced himself on the stool, and took his punishment.
“Kill me if you want to,” he invited. “I've got to die, and it don't
make a mite of difference how. Murder me if you're so inclined.”
“Man--man--man, what's the matter with you?” gasped Mayo. “We've got a
chance! Here's a girl to save!”
“She hain't got no business being here. Was sneaked aboard. It's no
use to pound me. I won't lift a finger. My mind is made up. I've been
deserted by the Old Man.”
“You old lunatic, Captain Downs got carried away by those cowards. Wake
up! Help me! For the love of the Lord, help me!”
“Rushing around will only take my mind off'n thoughts of the hereafter,
and I need to do some right thinking before my end. It ain't any use to
threaten and jaw; nothing makes any difference to me now.”
Mayo saw the uselessness of further appeal, and the fellow dangled as
limply as a stuffed dummy when the young man shook him. Therefore Mayo
gave over his efforts and hurried back to the long-boat. The spectacle
of the girl struggling with the stuff she was jettisoning put new
determination into him. Her amazing fortitude at the time when he had
looked for hysterics and collapse gave him new light on the enigma of
femininity.
“Did you tell me that Bradish is ill?” he asked, hurriedly.
“He is in the cabin. He would not talk to me. I could not induce him to
come on deck.”
“I must have help with the tackle,” he told her, and started aft on the
run.
He found Bradish sprawled in a morris-chair which was lashed to a
radiator. He expected hot words and more insults, but Bradish turned to
him a face that was gray with evident terror. His jaw sagged; his eyes
appealed.
“This is awful!” he mourned. “What has happened on deck? I heard the
fighting. Where is Miss Mar-ston?”
“She is forward. There has been an accident--a bad one. We have lost the
captain and crew. Come on. I need help.”
“I can't help. I'm all in!” groaned Bradish.
“I say you must. It's the only way to save our lives.”
Bradish rolled his head on the back of the chair, refusing. His manner,
his sudden change from the fighting mood, astonished Mayo. The thought
came to him that this man had been pricked to conflict by bitter grudge
instead of by his courage.
“Look here, Bradish, aren't you going to help me save that girl?”
“I'm not a sailor. There's nothing I can do.”
“But you've got two hands, man. I want to get a boat overboard. Hurry!”
“No, no! I wouldn't get into a small boat with these waves so high. It
wouldn't be safe.”
“This schooner is sinking!” shouted Mayo. He fastened a heavy clutch
upon Bradish's shoulders. “There's no time to argue this thing. You come
along!”
He hauled Bradish to his feet and propelled him to the companionway,
and the man went without resistance. It was evident that real danger and
fear of death had nearly paralyzed him.
“There's nothing I can do!” he kept bleating.
But Mayo hurried him forward.
“Ralph!” cried the girl, fairly lashing him with the tone in which she
delivered the word. “What is the matter with you?”
“There's nothing I can do. It isn't safe out here.”
“You must do what this man tells you to do. He knows.”
But Bradish clung to the gunwale of the long-boat and stared out at the
yeasty waves, blinking his eyes.
“If I only had a couple of men instead of these two infernal tapeworms,”
raged Mayo, “I could reeve tackle and get this boat over. Wake up! Wake
up!” he clamored, beating his fist on Bradish's back.
“Ralph! Be a man!” There were anger, protest, shocked wonder in her
tones.
Suddenly Mayo saw an ominous sight and heard a boding sound. The
fore-hatch burst open with a mighty report, forced up by the air
compressed by the inflowing water. He wasted no more breath in argument
and appeals. He realized that even an able crew would not have time to
launch the boat. The schooner was near her doom.
In all haste he pulled his clasp-knife and cut the lashings which held
the boat in its chocks. That the craft would be driven free from the
entangling wreckage and go afloat when the schooner went under he could
hardly hope. But there was only this desperate chance to rely upon in
the emergency.
In his agony of despair and his fury of resentment he was tempted to
climb into the boat and leave the two cowards to their fate. But he
stooped, caught Bradish by the legs and boosted him over the gunwale
into the yawl. A sailor's impulse is to save life even at the risk of
his own. Mayo ran to the galley and kicked the cook off the stool and
then drove him headlong to the longboat. The man went along, hugging his
cat.
“What will happen to us?” asked the girl when Mayo climbed in.
“I don't know,” he panted. “I reckon the devil is pitching coppers for
us just now--and the penny is just hopping off his thumb nail!”
His tone was reckless. The excitement of the past few hours was having
its effect on him at last. He was no longer normal. Something that was
almost delirium affected him.
“Aren't you frightened?” she asked.
“Yes,” he admitted. “But I'm going to keep hustling just the same.”
Bradish and the cook were squatting amidships in the yawl.
“You lie down under those thwarts, the two of you, and hang on,” cried
Mayo. Then he quickly passed a rope about the girl's waist and made the
ends of the line fast to the cleats. “I don't know what will happen when
the old tub dives,” he told her. “Those five thousand tons of coal will
take her with a rush when she starts. All I can say is, hold tight and
pray hard!”
“Thank you,” she said, quietly.
“By gad, she's got grit!” muttered the young man, scrambling forward
over the prostrate forms of the other passengers. “I wonder if all the
women in the world are this way?” He was remembering the bravery of
Polly Candage.
There was a huge coil of rope in the bow, spare cable stored there. Mayo
made fast the free end, working as rapidly as he was able, and bundled
about half the coil into a compact mass--a knob at the end of some ten
fathoms of line. And to this knob he lashed oars and the mast he found
stowed in the boat. He knew that if they did get free from the schooner
only an efficient sea-anchor or drag would keep the yawl right side up.
When this task was finished he crouched low in the bow and looked at the
girl.
“We're about ready to start on our journey,” he called to her. “If I
don't see you again, good-by!”
“I shall not say good-by to you, Captain Mayo--not yet!”
XXIV ~ DOWN A GALLOPING SEA
I saddled me an Arab steed and saddled her another,
And off we rode together just like sister and like brother,
Singing, “Blow ye winds in the morning!
Blow ye winds, hi ho! Brush away the morning dew,
Blow ye winds, hi ho!”
--Blew Ye Winds.
With anxiety that was almost despairing Mayo looked up at the shrouds,
stays, and halyards, which were set like nets to right and left and
overhead.
A big roller tumbled inboard and filled the space forward of the break
of the main-deck. The swirling water touched the sides of the long-boat
and then receded when the stricken schooner struggled up from the
welter. A scuttle-butt was torn from its lashings and went by the board,
and other flotsam followed it.
Mayo found that spectacle encouraging. But the longboat sat high in its
chocks; when it did float it might be too late.
Another wave roared past, and the long-boat quivered. Then Mayo took a
chance without reckoning on consequences. He made a double turn of the
cable around his forearm and leaped out of the boat and stood on deck,
his shoulder against the stem. The next wave washed him to his waist,
tore at him, beat him against the long-boat's shoe, but he clung fast
and lifted and pushed with all his strength.
That push did it!
The boat needed just that impetus to free her from the chocks. She
lifted and rushed stern foremost to lee, and the young man dragged after
her.
When the boat dipped and halted in a hollow of the sea he clutched
the bow and clambered in. Tugging mightily, he managed to dump the
sea-anchor over.