Part 7

The first half-dozen strokes told a different tale. He was stooping to grip the spokes of the wheel when the first rush of water sounded on the deck, and its fullness stopped him like a blow in the face. Instantly he blew his whistle over the stern, and called to Medbury to come aboard at once. He heard Medbury's "Aye, aye, sir," and called to the second mate for a lantern. It was already on the quarter-deck when the boat swung out of the darkness in under the stern.

"We got her," Medbury called out, but Captain March made no reply. He swung the lantern down toward the boat by a lanyard.

"Find where we struck," he said, and, giving the wheel to the second mate, hurried forward.

He was standing on the fore-channel when Medbury brought the boat up, and, going as near as he dared, held the lantern over the side.

"There!" cried Medbury as the light of the lantern flashed over the scarred and abraded spots that they had already noted; but Captain March shook his head impatiently.

"No," he said curtly; "lower down. Watch when she rises."

The lantern shed a wan light upon the oily sea and the glistening black hull. Five times the brig rose and fell on the easy rollers; then she leaped to a great height, and for an instant, below the bilge, they caught sight of a jagged stretch of copper, torn, and shrunken like a withered apple. One glance showed that nothing could be done.

They had the boat over the side again in an incredibly short time. As he was rigging the fall to hoist her to her old place on the center-house, Medbury hesitated, and then hurried aft.

"Shall I lash the boat on deck, sir?" he asked, adding significantly: "We may need it."

"No, sir," replied the captain; "hoist it to its place. I don't make preparations to abandon my ship till I've done something to save her. Besides, I want the boat in the safest place if I've got to use it, after all. But I'm not thinking of that yet."

It was not long before the wind was coming out of the northeast in quicker and stronger puffs, and, under every thread of canvas, they began to forge ahead to the dismal clank of the pumps. There was no question of breaking out the cargo, and trying to patch the leak from the inside. It was to be a rush for port, to the music of the pump-brakes.

Medbury and Drew were standing by the port rail at four bells when Captain March came on deck from a study of his chart. He glanced aloft, looked to windward, then at his binnacle.

"Ease the sheets a little, Mr. Medbury," he said, "and keep her off half a point." He gave the course, then added: "Change the men at the pumps every hour; we'll all have to take a hand at it before it's over. The wind's freshening fast, and that's our chance. We've got to carry everything to-night. Call me in an hour."

He was going down the companionway when Medbury called to him.

"That vessel was burned, sir," he said. He held up his hands, blackened with the charred wood.

"You don't say!" exclaimed the captain. "How did that cat happen to escape?"

"Somehow she got forward, and the fire spread aft. It was the only spot untouched--the forecastle-deck."

"What did you do with her?" asked the captain. "I forgot all about her."

"Oh, I gave her to the steward; she was half-starved."

"All right," said the captain; "all right." Then he went below. It was the last bit of sleep he was to get for many an hour.

With started sheets and a freshening breeze, the brig began the song of the road. The laced foam went hissing past her sides, flecked here and there with spots of phosphorescent light; under her fore-foot was the growl of the heaped-up, rolling wave; now and then the shock of a higher sea, thrown back from her bows in a smother of spray, shook her from stem to stern. The fog had gone with the coming of wind, but the rack, like a flock of birds, swept by overhead. The wind began to sigh and whine in the rigging; with a tremulous, muffled roar the canvas strained and thundered: but through every other noise, insistent, penetrating, sounded the steady thump of the pumps and the rush of water from the spouts.

Once Medbury came aft after changing the men at the pumps, and stopped at the corner of the house to look aloft; he had felt the deck swinging wide under his feet.

"Steady, man! steady!" he called to the man at the wheel. "Don't let her yaw!"

He watched the sails for a moment, turning at last with a sigh of satisfaction to Drew, who was standing near.

"She's picking up her skirts like a little lady," he said. His tone was almost exultant.

"It's good to feel the rush of movement again," said Drew; "but I'm a little bewildered yet, it has come and gone so quickly--this strange experience."

"That's the way with things at sea," replied Medbury. "We're always expecting things to happen, and surprised when they come. But I don't know as it's much different with life in general," he added gloomily. "Trust in nothing--that's the only way to escape being disappointed. Trust in nothing, and be prepared for the worst."

XI

A slim shape came softly up out of the companionway, and, closing the door, paused uncertainly. Facing the wind, the girl thrust back her blowing hair, and looked about her.

"I thought my father was here," she murmured, not knowing whether to go or stay.

"He's below," Medbury told her.

"I thought he was here," she repeated. She hesitated a moment, and then turned suddenly to Medbury.

"Where are we going?" she asked him.

"Better ask your father that," he replied. "He only gave me the course."

"I did ask him. He said he believed we were chartered for Santa Cruz."

"Then that's where we're going," he said promptly.

"I can't realize yet what has happened," she went on; "it was so calm and peaceful. It seems the strangest thing."

"Oh, this sort of thing's been done before," replied Medbury. "They can't accuse us of inventing any new kind of foolishness; so don't you go to feeling proud because you think you've found something strange. When you get out to Santa Cruz all the old captains in port will drop aboard and spin yarns about what's happened to them, till you'll think this is the commonest thing in the world."

"You're trying to make me feel safe," she declared; "that frightens me all the more. You take too much pains to assure me. Tell me truly: have you ever been in greater danger?"

"Yes," he answered; "many a time, and only last winter, for once. For five minutes, one night, I thought of more things in my life than I'd done for twenty years. I haven't done that yet, to-night. I never thought to walk the streets of Blackwater again."

Hetty tried to think how it would seem to feel that she, too, would not walk the streets of Blackwater again. In two months, she remembered, the cherry-trees would be in bloom there; she could see them whitening the whole village. She looked at him and smiled.

"Did you think of it in cherry-time, with all the streets and dooryards white with blossoms?" she asked idly, with a vague notion of distracting her thoughts from the present hour.

"Yes," he answered quietly; "and of other white things--of drawing my sled home from school through the drifts, and glad to be alive."

She caught her breath and turned her face away. She was beginning to understand, she told herself, what it was to be a sailor, and face danger year after year, living one's life mainly in dreams, with only far-off memories to feed upon. Her eyes filled with tears. Finally she turned to him again with a little smile.

"I'm beginning to know what it is to be a sailor," she said.

The clock in the cabin struck, and the bell forward repeated the four sharp strokes. A man came aft to relieve the wheel. A moment later Captain March appeared on deck, and walked over to his daughter's side.

"Heh! young lady," he said, "I thought I told you to turn in."

"I'm going to stay with you a while," she answered, and took his arm.

"Cap'n," said Medbury, "hadn't you better keep your watch below? I'll change the men at the pumps and take a spell at the wheel myself. We don't need you now."

"No," replied the captain; "my place is on deck to-night."

They stood in silence a long time, listening to the sounds of the night, and having no inclination to speech. Suddenly, above the roar of the wind, they heard the voice of the lookout crying from the forecastle-deck:

"Light ahead on the port bow! Light ahead! White light!"

Captain March sprang to the wheel and jammed the helm hard up; Medbury ran forward. He had scarcely reached the forecastle-deck when the light came abreast, a cable's length away. All at once it began to swing in a short, quick arc, and the people on the brig heard the cry of voices. It swept past them like a banshee, with the light swinging frantically, and the sound of oars chopping the sea in short, irregular strokes. The next moment the brig came up into the wind with rattling blocks and slapping canvas, and Captain March was roaring orders in a mighty voice, while the watch below streamed out upon the deck like a hive of frightened bees.

They lay with sails shaking and a flare burning over the quarter, and listened for the sound of oars again, with the brig rolling and thrashing under them. They heard it at last, and a voice urging the rowers on; and soon a boat came out of the blackness of the night, reeling crazily over the seas.

Medbury stood on the rail, with the crew clustered behind him, as the boat swung in.

"Steady!" he sang out. "Steady there, or you'll swamp her! Hold off, and watch your chance!"

There came a "smooth," and the boat shot in, and a black little figure leaped upon a thwart, and, steadied by two men, was swung up over the rail and to the deck by Medbury almost before he realized that it was a woman.

As her feet struck the deck, she turned with a little laugh.

"_Mon Dieu!_" she cried, "eet iss betteh--dees." She watched the others coming over the rail, and, when all were safe, turned to Medbury with a little courtesy. "Eet iss ver' _ro_manteec tow be safed from doze salt wateh by so nize young gentleman," she murmured, with a gleeful face. "Yo' happen tow be a mah'ied man, maybe?"

"No, ma'am," Medbury answered soberly.

She laughed in his face.

"Yo' sad faw das, maybe?" she asked mischievously.

"Oh, no," he answered, laughingly recovering himself.

"Das iss mo' betteh," she said demurely, and turned to Hetty.

Taking both her hands in her own, she kissed her impulsively.

"Ah ahm mo' gladdeh faw tow see yo' naw ahnybody," she said. "Ah see nut'ing but doze mens all tam. Ah t'ink Ah go git crezzy," she added laughingly.

They got the brig on her course again, and took the captain of the boat and his two passengers down into the cabin. The captain said his vessel was a Danish bark from Copenhagen, bound for Santa Cruz, and she had been burned two days before. They had taken to their boats, but, as there was no wind, they had lingered near, in the hope that the smoke from the burning vessel would be a beacon for some rescuer. But no vessel had been sighted, and before night came on they had started on their long road. Their other boat had been lost in the fog.

The captain had told his story in fair English, and at its close he turned to his passengers, and said they were going home to Santa Cruz, where the young man, a lieutenant in the army, was stationed. His sister, Miss Stromberg, he added, lived with her brother. As he mentioned their names, he bowed. Both rose, and, passing gravely around the group, shook hands with all. They were much alike--small, dark-haired, with handsome, piquant faces. Life seemed a huge joke to both.

As they seated themselves again, the girl looked about her and smiled.

"Ah t'ink dis iss mo' nizeh naw das liddy boat," she said.

"Mooch mo' nizeh," her brother agreed. He smiled, and bowed to the collected company, beginning with Hetty and ending with her.

"I hope so," said Captain March; then he turned to the Danish captain and added: "I'm glad to get your men; I've already found your vessel."

When he had finished the story of his own misfortune, he went up on deck, followed by the two rescued men.

"My dear," said Mrs. March to the girl, "you must be tired out. Now you must have something to eat and then go straight to bed. My daughter can easily take you in her room."

The girl laughed, and, leaning forward, placed her hand on the speaker's knee.

"Ah t'ink das iss mos' kind, lak ma own modder. Das iss ve'y nize. How s'all Ah say no at so kind heaht? Ah t'ink Ah ahm 'mos' t'ousand year' old, and 'mos' aslip--me." Her shoulders drooped; her eyes closed. "And das iss ve'y im_po_lite wiz so kind, good peop'!" Her eyes opened again, and begged forgiveness for the discourtesy.

"Nonsense, child!" said Mrs. March. "I should think you'd be half dead. I only hope you won't find worse trouble here; though I must say we deserve all we get for trusting ourselves on the water--we women."

"Yo' lak not doze wateh?" Miss Stromberg asked.

"Like it!" said Mrs. March. "I'm afraid every minute."

"Ah!" she murmured piteously. Her eyes caught Drew's look, and she smiled. "Yo' lak eet, maybe?" she asked him.

"Yes," he answered; "or at least until to-night. But I do not know it well."

"No?" she said.

"Mr. Drew is a minister of the gospel," explained Mrs. March, with dignity; then she added with smiling derision: "He thinks he's taking a pleasure trip."

"Ah!"--Miss Stromberg flashed a bright smile upon Drew--"das iss ve'y nize tow be a min_ees_ter--tow be so good as tow prich tow peop'. Ma fader one also wass; but me--" she shrugged her shoulders--"Ah find das ve'y hahd tow be so good all da tam. Eet iss ve'y sad not tow tek doze examp' off ma fader." She sighed.

Her brother and Captain Rand joined her at supper, and brother and sister were very gay; but the captain ate hurriedly, and speedily returned to the deck. Lieutenant Stromberg soon followed him, but Drew lingered. Miss Stromberg had been telling her experiences in the wreck.

"And you were not frightened?" he asked her.

"Mos' exceeding'," she answered gaily.

"Your brother says you were very brave," he told her, smilingly.

"He!" she exclaimed, with gay scorn. "He knows not. Eet iss woman's paht tow deceife efer. Yo' learn so not alretty?" She laughed in his face.

"Ah, I have much to learn!" he answered, with a smile.

"Eet iss so," she agreed; "doze theologic school tich not efer't'ing."

"Now I shall be on my guard," he answered, and, going up the companionway, laughingly bade her good night.

"On guahd!" Her scoffing voice followed him. "Das iss doze mos' worse tam."

Smilingly he walked to the rail, and, leaning his elbows on it, looked out into the night. Medbury, walking the deck, stopped at his side.

"Jolly little bit of flotsam we picked up," he said.

"Yes," answered Drew; "she is charming."

"Well, she's a little flirt," said Medbury. "Did you hear what she said to me when she came aboard? It took away my breath for a minute." He laughed.

"She's audacious," said Drew; "but I think that's all. I should rather say she is bent on amusing herself. I should call her remarkably sincere."

"Well, she's remarkably pretty," replied Medbury. "And what a voice! She makes that lingo of hers sound like a pretty little piece of music. I hope we'll not have to make her take to the boat again."

Until then Drew had hardly thought of the wind. Now it seemed like the pressure of a hand against his face. The darkness of the night was relieved by a luminous haze close down to the sea, which seemed to radiate a mysterious light that was like an opaque spray. The stars were gone, and the wind no longer came in gusts, but in a great rush of sound that overbore speech like the beat of a corps of drums, near and threatening. Every strand of rigging twanged in the sweep of the gale; the canvas hummed with a muffled roar; now and then a wave broke amidships with a sudden shock, and ran hissing across the deck.

Medbury had gone forward to the pumps, which stopped suddenly, and Drew felt his way along the house to the break in the deck. A group stood about the well with a lantern, and Medbury was bending over it. "Slack three feet and a half," he said, straightening up. Captain March turned away without a word, and walked aft; but Drew stayed to see the pumps rigged again and their wearying thump begin once more, with four men at the bars. As Medbury passed him, Drew asked him what it was.

"Three and a half feet," he said, and hurried past.

Then Drew at last understood that there was that depth of water in the hold.

It came on to rain later, at first a few small drops out of the black sky, and then a driving sheet that seemed to sweep straight on and never to fall. One by one the passengers disappeared, and Captain March and Medbury, in oilskins, held the quarter-deck with the man at the wheel. Back and forth across the deck the captain walked, now climbing to windward, with his body bent forward and his legs far apart, now braced back, and taking short steps down the wet incline, and sometimes breaking into a little run and checking himself at the rail. Medbury stood for the most part at the windward corner of the house, going forward from time to time, but never for long. They rarely spoke.

Once Medbury went to the binnacle for a moment.

"Steady, man! steady!" he said. "You're yawing over half the card."

"Steady, sir," the sailor replied in an emotionless voice.

Captain March stopped his walk at the wheel, and looked aloft.

"Steer hard?" he asked good-naturedly. He had shouted, for the uproar was now too great for ordinary speech.

"Yes, sir," the man replied, and bent to the spokes.

"Guess I'll take a hold with you," shouted the captain, and stepped to his side; but Medbury touched his arm.

"I'll take it," he said; but the captain shook his head.

"No," he answered; "I'll try it a spell."

Medbury cast an uneasy look aloft at the maintopsail. In the murky light he could see it bellied out like a great bowl.

"It's that topsail makes her steer hard," he cried in an aggrieved tone.

Captain March did not glance up.

"Yes," he shouted; "but I guess it's drawing some."

Medbury looked at him sharply, and then turned away, grinning.

"Well, I guess it is!" he muttered to himself. "The old pirate!"

He made his way to the topsail-sheet, and shook it; it was like a rod of iron.

"Couldn't budge it, if I wanted to," he said to himself. "I wonder how long that sail's going to stand all this."

He started forward, shot in under the lee of the center-house as a great green sea came over the rail, and, dripping, mounted to the forecastle-deck. The lookout stood with his arms clasped about the capstan-head, staring straight ahead. In his yellow oilskins, he had the look of a wooden man, washed by the seas, immobile, without sensation.

Medbury took him by the shoulder, and he barely turned his head. His face was as emotionless as his figure; only his eyes showed life.

"You'll--" Medbury lowered his head as he began to shout, for a sheet of spray sprang at his face like a cat, blinding him and making him gasp. Then he felt the deck slipping into a bottomless abyss, and, opening his eyes, saw the jibboom disappear, then the bowsprit, while over the bow rolled a great green wave, shot with white, and irradiated with phosphorescence. Almost to the waist it buried them, while they stood for what seemed an interminable time, clasping the capstan, with the dragging water roaring about them. The strange fancy flashed across Medbury's mind that it was like being on the nose of a gigantic mole frantically burrowing underground. Then the bow rose again, shook itself free, and Medbury and the sailor, unlocking their grip on the capstan, looked at each other.

"You'll have to get out of this," shouted Medbury, finishing what he had begun to say. The man nodded.

"That was the first bad one, sir," he yelled back. "I don't know's I mind bein' drownded, but I don't want to be speared to death." He looked aloft, where the lighter spars and sails seemed like a falling arch above him. "I've been expectin' to get that royal-yard through my back for the last hour. Couldn't hear it if it did tumble--in all this noise."

"Well, you'll have to get out of this," Medbury repeated mechanically. "Go up to the top of the center-house. You'll be safe there."

They made their way down, the man going up to his station, and Medbury aft.

"She's burrowing a good deal," he shouted in the captain's ear--"like an old mole."

The captain nodded.

"Good reason," he replied.

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'Good reason.' There's a lot of heft in this wind."

"I sent the lookout up to the top of the center-house," Medbury now called. "No place for him forward."

"That's right," answered Captain March; then he nodded his head to show that he had heard and approved.

The watch was changed at twelve, and the second mate came on deck, but Medbury still lingered. Captain March would not leave the wheel. At three bells Medbury sounded the pumps again, and reported a full three and a half feet of water in the hold. It had gained two inches in three hours.

Captain March merely nodded when he was told, and turned his inscrutable face aloft.

XII

The night was dragging on toward the hour when the watch on deck is the hardest to bear. In his weariness of body and mind, Medbury had grown indifferent to the tremendous rush of the wind. The noises of the night no longer seemed near him, but far off, muffled by some strange mental wind-break that hedged him in as if by a wall. Once or twice he caught himself nodding, and looked up, startled, to take a turn or two across the deck. His mind was tense with the mental strain, and the changing of the men at the pumps, or any pause in the monotony of the uproar, irritated him, as the stopping of a railroad train at stations affects one dozing through a long journey. He was not afraid,--he had even begun to exult in the self-control of his superior, seeing in his perfect handling of his vessel something uncanny, even godlike,--yet he was all the while keenly alive to the thought that Hetty lay below, within the circle of impending danger. It was like being compelled to run for one's life under a great weight.

It was past four bells when the maintopsail split with a sharp report like musketry-fire, and, looking up, they saw black space where just before they had seen a gray hollow of canvas loom through the night. A ragged fringe of gray flapped along the bolt-ropes, whipping straight out in the force of the gale. They let tack and sheet go with a rush, and strove to clew up the topsail, trying to save, in the stoical following of habit, what was no longer worth saving.

Medbury came aft when they had clewed up what remained of the sail. It seemed ludicrous to try to stow that frazzled bit of whipping canvas. He went close to the captain.

"I didn't stow it, sir," he shouted in his ear. "Didn't seem worth while to send a man aloft. No place for him. Nothing but a rag left."

"No, no," the captain roared. "That's right. Don't want to expose anybody more'n we can help." His voice seemed far away--detached, as it were, in some strange manner.

Medbury still lingered near. He was a bit excited, and wished to talk.

"Steer any easier, sir?" he roared.

Captain March nodded, then he leaned toward his mate.

"Yes," he yelled. He nodded aloft. "Been expecting that." Then, for the first time in his life, he became communicative as to his plans at sea. "It's like this," he went on: "We've got five hundred miles to run in this craft or an open boat. I'll make it in this, if I can. Got to take some risk, you know. Can't afford to take in sail as long as she carries it. When it goes of its own accord, well and good. Can't help that."