Part 6

Captain March shook his head and sighed.

"It does beat the deuce," he said.

This was as wide a departure from the placid philosophy with which he looked upon life as he ever gave expression to; and his daughter and his mate, who knew him equally well, recognized in it the extent of his mental disturbance. To them both the prolonged calm, in the changing twilight, took on an aspect of uncanniness. It was as if they stood absolutely alone, the last of living things, in a chaos of dead waters, under the sweeping throng of stars, which saw not and heeded not the blotting out of their small world. Tacitly both had agreed to give no sign of their changed relations so long as they were compelled to meet daily.

Medbury slipped away forward for a turn about the deck. He looked at the lights to see if they were in order.

"They might as well be kept burning," he muttered, "though God knows what good they are."

Back on the quarter-deck, when he returned from his round, he found the others leaning over the rail in silence. It had suddenly grown dark, and a haze had come up, obscuring the stars and the sea. He paused near Hetty, who looked up, smiled, and made room for him.

"We thought we heard the beat of a steamer's paddle just now," she said. "Listen!"

He leaned over the rail beside her, but for a long time heard nothing but the whine of spars, the rattle of the main-sheet blocks as the boom swung them taut, and the jump of the wheel in its becket. At intervals there came the sound of water dripping from the channels or spouting from the scuppers. These sounds seemed to make more acute the silence of the sea, which seemed like a living, threatening presence. At last Medbury stood up.

"There's nothing," he said.

"Listen!" said Hetty, in a low voice, and again he dropped his elbows to the rail.

Suddenly there came a quick succession of muffled throbs, like the far-off churning sound of a steamer's paddle-wheel; then it ceased as absolutely as if a door had been closed noiselessly upon it.

"There!" cried Hetty.

Fully ten minutes passed before they heard it again.

"It's queer," said Medbury. "There wasn't a sign of a steamer in sight at sunset. She must be far away, and we hear her only when we're both on the top of a swell. Sound carries a long way on a night like this."

Captain March straightened up.

"Bring me the glasses, Mr. Medbury," he said.

Medbury brought them, and the captain slowly swept the horizon; then he crossed the deck and walked to the main-rigging. Coming back, he handed the glasses to Medbury.

"Go forward and take a look," he said.

In five minutes the mate came back, and went up the main-rigging to the crosstrees. When he descended, he came aft.

"It's getting thick," he said; "she ought to blow her whistle."

"Better get your fog-horn forward," said the captain, and took the glasses for another look as Medbury went below. A moment later the mate returned to the deck with the long box of the patent fog-horn, and presently the dreary wail began to sound at intervals from the forecastle-deck. Hetty shivered as she heard it.

"It frightens me!" she murmured, with a little catch in her voice. "It frightens me!"

The crew were at the rail forward, silent and listening. The fog had blotted out the fore part of the vessel, but the forecastle door was open, and the swinging lamp was like an orange center of light in a nebulous haze. Once a sailor passed before it, and his shape loomed black and huge against the luminous interior. At short intervals the fog-horn sounded like a wailing banshee through the darkness; but there was no answering signal: only at long intervals came that strange, throbbing beat, like an uncanny chuckle, but seemingly neither nearer nor farther away than at first. Hardly two aboard agreed as to its direction, for the opaque walls of fog deflect sound-waves at sea, as a crystal breaks a ray of light.

Back on the quarter-deck Medbury was telling a curious story.

"Two years ago," he began slowly, with the hesitation of a man who feels moved to confidence against his better judgment, "we were running up the straits to Singapore, when it suddenly came on thick. We were close-hauled and had just about wind enough for steerageway, and we had the fog-horn going and were keeping a sharp lookout, for we were right in the track of shipping, and you know how vessels drift together in a fog, no matter which way they were heading before it thickened up. Well, we hadn't heard a peep all day, and toward night it seemed to be lifting a little, when I heard the man at the wheel give a little cry, and, looking astern, there, not a cable's length away, was a dingy, raveled-out, full-rigged Portuguese brig slipping right across our wake. They hadn't made a sound, and they didn't even then, though our old man got black in the face with cursing them for their sins. There was a black-whiskered old fellow, with his coat-collar turned up about his ears, at the wheel; but he scarcely looked our direction: only once he wagged his beard at us, and threw one arm over his head in a funny way, and then squinted aloft again, paying no more attention to us than if we'd been so much seaweed. But just forward the fore-rigging there was a row of sailormen leaning over the rail, and their eyes followed us like a lot of beady birds' eyes till the fog swallowed them up again. Well, the day after we reached Singapore the old man came aboard in a brown study. He said he'd heard ashore that there'd been a lot of dirty weather knocking about the straits, and a Portuguese brig called the _Villa Real_ was forty days overdue. Well, she stayed overdue, and not a splinter or spun-yarn of her ever came ashore." He paused a moment to relight his pipe, and then added: "On the stern of the Portuguese brig that we had seen, in big white letters a foot high, was the name _Villa Real_."

In the silence that followed some one forward gave a low laugh; in the fog it sounded strange and unnatural.

"Did you ever hear a loon cry alongshore at night?" asked Medbury. For the first time on the voyage he had become actually loquacious. "I used to hear them at home when I was a boy. It's a creepy sound, and makes a man feel lonesome and homesick." He paused, as if half-ashamed of the confession, but went on, with a boyish chuckle: "Somehow, that fellow's laugh made me think of it, though I can't say it sounded like a loon, either. It's queer how one thing'll suggest another that isn't at all like it."

"It sounded strange to me, too," confessed Hetty.

"Did it?" he said, turning to her. "Well, that's funny."

"Knocking about in fog and storm, without sleep, a sailor gets queer notions in his head at times," said Captain March, slowly. "Now I had a little experience once that seemed queer at the time, though I suppose it was natural enough, if you only knew how to explain it. You know what queer shapes will sometimes loom up at night; but walk right up to 'em and you find it's nothing but a stump or a white post or something. Well, the first vessel I ever had was the schooner _Sarah J. Mason_. I was pretty young at the time, and I guess I was a bit nervous, but it does seem yet as if that first voyage as master was the roughest I've ever had. I had chartered for Para, and we struck dirty weather almost from the first. About eight days out the wind came out ahead, light and baffling, and I got her topsails on for the first time. But along after sundown it freshened up again, and I took 'em in. A young fellow from up the State somewhere had stowed the maintopsail, and someway, I don't know how,--I guess he was hurrying and a little careless; it was his watch below,--he slipped. For years after that, when I wasn't feeling first-rate, I used to wake up with a start, thinking I heard his yell again. Well, it wasn't very rough, and we got a boat over, but it wasn't any use. He must have gone down like a stone. After that it was dirty weather, with scarcely a glimpse of the sun, all the way out. I was upset and worn out, I guess; but one night, looking aloft, I saw some one on the main-crosstrees. There was a good-sized moon, though the sky was overcast, but light enough to see pretty distinctly. 'Who's that aloft?' says I to the second mate. He didn't answer much of anything, but walked to the rail and looked up. 'Well, call him down,' I said sharply, and he went to the rigging, and, standing on the rail, yelled: 'Who's that up there?' Then he went half-way up and stopped. I guess he stood there five minutes before he came down and went forward. In a minute he came back, looking pretty white. 'Everybody accounted for, sir,' he said, and his teeth were chattering as if he had the ague.

"Now, it sounds funny, but I never looked aloft at night on that trip without wishing I didn't have to, and there wasn't a sailorman aboard who could have been driven to go up to that masthead after dark if he'd been killed for refusing. We had fair weather coming home, and we carried that topsail till we blew it off her one night. I was plagued glad to see it go."

"Talking about explaining things if you only walk right up to them," said Medbury--"now there 're some things you _can't_ explain. Take the old _Martha Hunter_, for instance. How are you going to explain her?" He leaned forward and addressed his talk to Drew, who knew nothing of the _Martha Hunter_. "She was built in Blackwater when I was a boy," he went on, "and before her ribs were all up Jerry Bartow fell from the scaffolding and was killed, and Tom Martin nearly cut his foot off with an adze while he was trimming a stick of timber that went into her. It went in with the stain of his blood on it, and it wasn't the last stain of the kind that she carried before she was through. Oh, she was greedy for that sort of thing! When she was launched she must have got the notion that she was designed to dig out a new channel in the harbor, for she fetched bottom and carried away her rudder; and before the year was out she came off the Boston mud-banks so badly hogged that she looked as if she'd got her sheer on upside down. It wasn't long before a sailorman fell from aloft and was killed on her deck; and the very next trip, in warping her out of her berth in Wareham, the hawser parted and broke the leg of the man who was holding turn at the capstan. Cap'n Silas Hawkins brought her home to overhaul, and the very first day he walked down the main-hatchway and was killed. Why, she used to drag ashore in any sort of a white-ash breeze; and if there was any dirty weather knocking about, she always managed to run her nose into it, and would come limping home like a disreputable old girl out on a lark. You could have filled a book with the stories of the men she lost or maimed, and the trouble she got into first and last. But she was fortunate in a way, too, for she made money, and you couldn't lose her. I guess she's running yet."

"I saw her a year ago last fall," said Captain March. "I haven't heard anything startling about her since, so I guess she's going."

"Well," said Medbury, "how are you going to explain her, and others like her? I'm not superstitious, or any more so than the common run of folks; but things like that--" He shrugged his shoulders and laughed, then, dropping his elbows to the rail again, turned to listen.

For a long time they had not noticed the sound that puzzled them, and now, in the silence, they remembered it again, and strained their ears to catch it once more. The fog-horn boomed out at regular intervals; only the noises of the rolling brig were also heard.

While they still stood listening, all at once Medbury thought he felt a puff of wind. Yet it was not so much wind as it was a suggestion of wind: it seemed to him that a hand, wet and cold, had been thrust close to his face and then withdrawn. He could not explain the chill that seemed to run through his frame. Then he shook off the feeling, and turned to Captain March.

"Did you feel a puff, sir?" he asked, and held his finger above his head.

"No," replied the captain. "If we get a stir of air, I'll put the canvas on her. I don't want to slat the sails all to pieces, but if we get enough for steerageway, we'll try it. I don't like loafing about in a fog like this with my hands in my pockets."

Then, even while he was speaking, out of the darkness and the fog and the subdued murmurs of the ocean, without other warning than the intangible beat that had mystified them, a long roller came sweeping in, lifted them in its mighty arms, slipped past, and dropped them with a shock that shook the brig, and forced a cry from the lips of every soul aboard.

X

The group on the quarter-deck staggered together in a huddled bunch, then fell apart as Medbury and the captain slipped out and ran forward. Then the brig rose on another swell, and came up bumping, with a snarling sound along the fore-chains.

"It's some barnacled old derelict," Medbury turned to shout to the captain, who was following him with surprising swiftness, but with short, quick strides, like a waddling duck, and breathing heavily. Medbury was on the rail, peering over into the darkness, when the captain reached the fore-rigging. A group of sailors huddled about the rail.

"Here, you," called Captain March, "get fenders quick! Bring that spare royal-yard--anything!" Then he lifted himself into the rigging by Medbury's side. The next minute he was calling for a lantern and the flare.

They quickly had the yard and some planks lashed over the side, though they knew that such protections were almost futile in the lift of the swell that was then running. Under the light of the flare, gray and almost invisible in the thick night, awash at one moment, at the next showing a jagged line of railless stanchions, they saw the derelict lying almost parallel with them. With the flare in his hand, Medbury lowered himself down to the channel, looking for the place of contact. Forward of the chains the side of the brig was badly scraped, and a part of the channel was splintered; but they could see no other injury.

"Lucky she didn't come under us when we dropped," Medbury said.

"She may yet," replied the captain. He straightened up, and held his hand above his head. There was not a breath of air stirring. He turned to the mate again. "Get a boat over the side quick, Mr. Medbury," he said; "we've got to pull out of this."

They swung the boat off the center-house, and with difficulty, in the heavy swell, got her over the side and away, with Medbury and five of the men as her crew. A line was paid out to them, and run through a forward chock and passed about the capstan. Standing by the port cathead, Captain March "held turn."

"Don't know what may happen," he said aloud to himself. "I'd better keep a hold o' this in this swell." He sent a man up to the top with a lantern, and the second mate to the wheel. "Straight ahead, now!" he roared to the boat. "We don't want to swing her counter over it. Straight ahead, now, you!"

He could hear the thud of the oars in the rowlocks and their irregular beat on the water, for rowing in the swell was hard; but he could hear, too, the _zip! zip!_ of the line as it tautened, and then the splash as it dropped slack. At times the two hulls came together with a jar, but with no great shock after the first.

Drew had come forward, and once he asked the captain if he could be of assistance. Captain March was leaning over the side, peering into the darkness for the derelict, and had not answered. When he turned to his line again, Drew repeated the question.

"No, no; just keep out of the way," replied the captain, with the impersonal contempt of the sailor for the landsman afloat in times of need.

They drew ahead but slowly; it was only by inches at the best, and there were times when they fell behind as the sweep of the sea caught them and rolled them from side to side through a wide arc. Fortunately, they were to the leeward of the wreck, and what advantage there was in their greater buoyancy and height above the sea added its little to the feeble efforts of the crew of the boat. Captain March could hear the unsteady ding-donging of the oars in the rowlocks as Medbury urged them on. He peered over the side of the brig with straining eyes.

"It ain't no way to go--like this," once he said aloud. It seemed a trivial end, without the pomp of storm and the exaltation that comes with the last struggle for life. He longed for the struggle for himself, he longed for it for his vessel.

At last there came a time when he could no longer see the derelict, and he grew restive under the uncertainty. All at once he thought he felt a breath of air across his face. He straightened himself, and held his hand up to the wind. It was surely a puff, and, quickly making the line fast, he hurried aft to take the wheel.

"Get your staysails on her," he told the second mate, as he relieved him. "Set your maintopmast staysail first,--there'll be a steadier air up there,--then get your foretopmast staysail on her." He turned to Drew. "Just bear a hand there, will you?" he said to him.

He heard the staysail run up and the cry of the second mate to belay; then he heard them sheeting it home.

"Not too flat, Mr. Barrett! Not too flat!" he called. "Give her an easy sheet, so she'll lift a little. Now up with the others!"

He saw Hetty's face at the companionway, and glanced at her with half-averted eyes. She was a true sailor's daughter, he thought with pride. He did not object to her presence, for she never worried folks with questions. Then he called to her:

"It's all right, my girl. Don't you worry. Just tell your mother it's all right."

He heard the staysails flap from time to time, and so began to whistle for a wind. "Deuce take it!" he muttered, "why don't it blow?" Every moment or two he stepped to the rail and peered into the darkness to note his progress. They had slowly drifted away from the wreck, the stern of which now lay opposite the quarter-deck of the brig. The second mate came running aft.

"Shall we brace the yards around, and try to get what canvas we can on her, sir?" he asked.

Captain March shook his head.

"No," he answered; "you couldn't do much, short-handed as you are. Maybe we'd just lose control of her. But you go forward and call to Mr. Medbury to keep a-going--keep a-going."

It was a quarter of an hour before the derelict's stern was clearly past the brig's. Slowly the house crept past--a high house, Captain March could now see plainly, and painted white. "Some foreigner," he thought with scorn, "scared to his boats before he was hurt." He felt all the contempt of his race and kind for timid unseafaring peoples.

Once when the wreck sank deeply in the hollow of the sea, and the swell broke over her, she came up sputtering, and Captain March heard the water gushing from some opening with the rhythmic _chug-chug_ of water gurgling from a bottle.

"That's what we heard," he said aloud. It sounded uncanny even now. "I guess it's a water-butt that's shifted over on its side and the sea washes full," he thought. "Well, it's creepy enough."

Suddenly he gave a start, for from the wreck came the faint, unmistakable crying of a cat. He walked to the rail and listened, muttering to himself: "The scoundrels, to leave her behind!" He stood by the rail for a moment, and presently called: "Kitty! kitty! poor kitty!" Then he went back to the wheel again, whistling loudly for a wind, that he might not hear the plaintive response to his call.

For a time the situation had worn for Hetty a certain pleasurable aspect of romance; but in the dragging moments that followed the sending away of the boat, her nerves grew tense under the strain, and seemed to present, as it were, sharp edges to the irritating suspense. The low-riding wreck, awash at one moment, at the next looming threateningly above them, showing its jagged outlines uncertainly through the enlarging fog, took on an aspect wholly sinister. With only the desire to get beyond sight of it, she crossed to the starboard main-rigging, and gazed steadily out across the vaporous expanse of the windless sea.

Her resolute refusal to watch the derelict took on, in her mind, something of the character of a senseless game with her fear: she told herself that she would count two hundred before she looked to see if it were farther away, then five hundred; after that she resolved not to look until she heard a footstep or a voice. The latter task, unrelieved by the mechanically mental exertion of the whispered numbers, became speedily unbearable, and she began to count again. Presently a step sounded on the deck near her. In the tension of the moment she looked up, dangerously near to hysteria.

It was, of course, Drew, the only idle man aboard.

"We have passed it," he said gaily.

Her hand was resting against the rigging, and now, as he spoke, in a revulsion of feeling she laid her forehead against it and laughed.

"You poor child!" he murmured.

At that she lifted her head quickly and said:

"The whole night has been so unreal--that strange sound, the fog, our ghost talk, and this danger--" She looked past him in a strange mental relaxation, feeling the inadequacy of words to convey her immeasurable relief.

"It has been hard for you," he said gently. "I thought of you, and wished that I might help you, but I'm a helpless creature here." He smiled.

No one else had come near her or thought of her, she told herself unreasonably; and now she turned upon him the frank, open look of a child.

"You do help me," she said.

Alone in that strange calm, but barely escaped from a grave danger, they looked at each other for a moment through the distorting glass of their common isolation. Suddenly he moved toward her.

"Then may it not be for always?" he whispered. He could gather no other meaning from Medbury's speech at sunset than that he had given up all hope. He himself was free to speak at last. Yet he must have spoken in any case.

She gave a little backward spring, and laid hold of the shrouds with a hand that trembled.

"Not that!" she gasped. "Oh, I didn't mean that!"

"But I mean it," he urged. "Try to think of it favorably. You know the work I desire: let us work together. Life would mean so much to me with you near! And for you--it would be in the path of your own desires, to work among the poor."

For a moment it seemed like an open door to her hopes.

"I had thought of your work since you spoke of it," she said in a low voice; "and I wondered if they would let me try that--alone, of course, I mean," she added with pretty confusion. "I should like to do some good in the world. I seem so useless now. It gave me a new hope."

"And I," he urged--"do not put me apart from it!"

She had put him apart from it, she thought. She laid her hand upon the shrouds and dropped her face to it for a moment.

"Oh, I cannot tell!" she whispered.

"Do not try to tell now," he said. "Wait! It--"

Then sharply across their absorption they heard her father calling to the second mate to order in the boat. Without a word, she slipped aft.

As the boat drew near, Captain March went to the rail.

"They've left a cat aboard," he called to Medbury. "She's forward. I shouldn't like to leave even a cat like that." Then he added, as if to show that his humanity was dictated more by reason than by sentiment, "It seems unlucky--as if _we'd_ left her."

"All right, sir," Medbury replied; "I'll get her."

"Well, don't get stove. Just as soon as you come aboard, we'll make sail. There's a little air stirring."

As the boat swung away behind them, the captain told the second mate to rig and sound the pumps. The brig was unusually tight, and it was with no uneasiness that he gave the order, which he considered merely perfunctory.