THE MASTER RETURNS
The thought of our dead captain came to me, of what his will would have
been in this crisis of life and death, and I paused to wonder why he had
not rested until he was assured that I would not carry his precious
treasures back with me. Did he expect this situation, and doubt my
ability to cope with it? Action followed thought, and I ordered the
second mate and the crew forward to see what could be done with the
martingale guy.
Still the humor of the moment appealed to me. As Riley left the poop he
shouted, "Be the Holy St. Patrick, it has blown the buttons off me
oilskin coat." There was no question about its blowing, but it was also
possible that his snakelike position on the spanker-sheet had something
to do with the lost buttons.
It was now past noon. None of the crew cared to eat, preferring the
wave-swept deck to anything the cook had to offer. The murderer who
pays for his crime on the gallows and enjoys his ham and eggs on the
morn of execution may be happy indeed, but this does not apply to the
sailor. When there is a life and death battle on with the elements, he
is there to grab the one last chance if there be one. If not, he prefers
a watery grave to claim him with his stomach empty.
The seas kept coming larger, and every time one would break and spend
itself on the decks I thought it would be the last, and that she could
not arise. But she shook herself clear as she climbed the waves; then
again the sea, and again the dread.
I could not leave the poop nor the two men at the wheel. A wrong turn at
this howling, raging time, would mean quick despatch to the land of no
awakening. Sometimes even the helmsmen grew afraid, but a word of
encouragement sufficed to quiet them.
While I was standing to windward of the men at the wheel, watching her
every move as she was pitched hither and thither on this crazy spiral
sea, she shipped a green sea that shook her from stem to stern. It was
with great difficulty that she raised her black hull to the raging storm
again. I shouted to the men at the wheel. It was too late. She had
broached to with the stern sea on the beam, and the beam sea right
ahead.
Then the beam sea submerged her, and by it I was carried across the poop
deck, and found myself held under the wheel-box, with both legs pinned
in a vise-like grip by the tiller, which extended forward of the
rudder-head. Although dazed and strangled by the terrible impact of the
water, I managed to twist the upper part of my body towards the wheel
and to murmur, "For God's sake keep her off."
My weakened voice was lost in the tempest. There were no ears to hear my
pleadings. The men at the wheel were gone. Gone, indeed, to a watery
grave, and perhaps the others also. With me it would not take long. Just
another raking like the last one, and then the finish. Again the cook's
words echoed louder than the raging storm, "Do we finish here?"
As I lay there pinned to the deck, too helpless to even call aloud, and
as it seemed waiting, waiting, for the executioner to spring the deadly
trap, I was conscious that the door of the companion-way had closed with
a bang so terrific that it sounded above the storm. I twisted my head
and shoulders around to see if I dared to hope. There before me stood
the Hindoo stowaway. He did not notice me lying there pinned under the
wheel-box, nor could I manage to attract his attention.
With opal eyes glowing green and fiery red, he sprang to the wheel, and
with magnificent strength pulled on the spokes till they screeched
louder than the storm as they were dislodged from their oxidized
fittings. Harder and harder he pulled on the wheel. He didn't even
notice the seas breaking over him. The mysterious thing about him was
that he seemed to know what he was doing. He was keeping her off before
it.
In doing this he removed the tiller from my legs. At last I was free. As
I struggled and crawled to the weather-rail for support, the Hindoo
shouted in clear and ringing tones, in true seamanlike fashion, looking
neither to the right nor left, but straight ahead, as if staring into a
land-locked harbor. He repeated his order for the second time in a high
tenor voice:
"Get an axe out of the donkey-room and cut away the lee martingale guy.
Your flying-jibboom is gone overboard and is still held by the lee guy.
It is plowing a hole in the port bow."
I knew but one law. The law of self-preservation. My arms were locked
tight around the stanchion that supported the weather-rail. That quick
command of the Hindoo brought me sharply to the realization that I was
not yet given that quick despatch to the land of nowhere, but was still
in the flesh, and very much alive. My first rational thought was, "What
in Hell is the Hindoo doing at the wheel?" My pride as a sailor resented
the affront put upon my ability as a sailor by a stowaway who was daring
to assume the command of my ship, and daring to issue orders to me.
Letting go my hold on the stanchion, I cautiously made for the Hindoo
helmsman. While in the act, she shipped another drencher. I was carried
off my feet and washed away to the lee scuppers. But I managed, by some
interposition of Divine Providence, to fasten my arms around the
mooring-bitt, thus saving myself from an angry and cruel sea, which
seemed to delight in playing with me as a cat does with a mouse, only to
swallow me up in its fathomless depths.
Once again she wrenched herself free of the mad swirl and her stern went
down until we were in a valley between mountains of water. I realized as
I looked up at the bows which seemed to be towering above me, that the
flying-jibboom, like a clipped wing, was missing. Like a flash I
wondered how the Hindoo knew that the jibboom was gone.
As her stern ascended high into the air, I jumped for the wheel and with
an exclamation of joy I shouted, "God in Heaven, the Captain!"
There he stood beside the Hindoo. The dead Captain. The same heavy
mustache covered the lower lip. The same fiery eyes that knew no defeat.
He was looking straight ahead with muscle-set jaws. He appeared as if in
the flesh and ready as of yore to battle with the elements.
Then, like a flash, he vanished, and the Hindoo stood alone, pulling and
tugging on the wheel with his supple arms.
He spoke, and his usually high-pitched tenor voice rang out piercingly
clear. "Cut away your jibboom, you have no time to lose. Have no fear."
I knew that her former Captain was in command of the ship, and that his
masterly seamanship wrought through the Hindoo. I crept forward with new
courage to do his bidding.
Huddled together beneath the forecastle-head stood what remained of the
crew, who seemed not to know that two of their number were gone. The
second mate was praying, and helpless from fear to be of any use in
handling the schooner. Riley had his three-inch sailor's rope fast to
the windlass with one extra turn around his body. He was taking no
chances. Swanson was the only one without fear. When I called for a
volunteer to cut away the flying jibboom he made for the axe and rushed
onto the sea-swept forecastle-head. As the schooner arose high in the
air, he swung over the lee bow and with one stroke of the axe cut away
the hemp lanyard that was holding the massive spar from its freedom.
For five hours more we battled with the hurricane. The foretopmast went
overboard, and all our boats were smashed into firewood. The lee
bulwarks, between the mizzen and mainmast, were washed away, and still
the Hindoo held the wheel and issued his orders. Many times I offered to
take the wheel, and ordered him to go below. He would wave me away with
his hand, saying:
"Not yet,--soon, soon."
About six o'clock, twelve hours and a half after the hurricane struck
us, the wind let up some. We then went to work with a will to patch up
what was left of the "Wampa," and for the first time since half-past
five o'clock that morning, we realized how hungry we were. It was while
giving orders to the cook that I looked towards the wheel and saw that
the Hindoo was missing.
Calling Swanson to take the wheel as I ran, I rushed to find him. There
by the wheel he lay, where he had fallen, limp as a rag,--unconscious.
Gathering him easily into my arms, I carried him to the Captain's room,
laying him in the bunk as carefully as if he were a babe newborn. For
two hours we worked over him, the crew unchidden tiptoeing back and
forth in clumsy ministrations, the Socialist cook refusing to leave
him. As he finally came back to earth from those astral regions he so
easily frequented, a sigh of relief, almost hysterical, went up from the
whole ship. Surely there had been enough of tragedy!
Along about eight o'clock the wind fell very light. As there was still a
heavy swell running, it would be dangerous to put sail on her for she
would shake it into threads.
While walking up and down the poop deck I could hear Riley and the cook
working over the stowaway. My thoughts turned to old Charlie and to Dago
Joe, who were sleeping their last sleep out there at sea. Had it not
been for Him, for Him who had loved his ship, we would all have shared
the same merciless fate. What might have happened had I followed my
first impulse to cast the Hindoo overboard?
The cook came running up the companion-way very much excited, and said
"Come down quick, the Hindoo is showing signs of life." In the Captain's
room, under the sickly and only lamp, the frail body was moving from
side to side, sometimes making a feeble effort to sit up, often
swinging his arms as if to ward off some impending danger. Then he asked
for a drink of water and gradually became rational.
When I told him what a wonderful service he had performed, he smiled and
said, "Surely you can't mean me." I insisted, telling him in detail how,
when two men had been washed overboard, he had seized the wheel and
saved the ship. "You must be mistaken," he protested, "I have not been
on deck, and I cannot steer, I know nothing whatever about a ship as a
sailor. But I have just awakened from a dream that was worse than your
Christian Hell."