Part 8

Medbury had begun to long, with an indescribable sense of weariness, for the coming of day. Once, as he looked eastward, it seemed to him that the curtain of darkness had lifted: the crests of the waves no longer showed a vivid contrast to the black body of the watery waste, but both were fading into a neutral tone of gray, and objects on board began to have more definite outlines. Then all at once the royal flew out of its bolt-ropes, like a hound loosened from its leash, and went twisting and snapping into the night.

Medbury saw the yard lowered to its place and all things made snug forward. As he passed under the foresail to go aft again, he had to brace himself against the wind, which drew under the sail like a great flue. Every cord of the sail seemed vibrant with sound; and as he staggered on, out of the tail of his eye he watched the mainsail tug at its sheet, and boom and gaff swing up like straws. As his head rose above the top of the house, he saw that Captain March's eyes were following him, and he turned his own away.

"If he sees me watching that mainsail," he said to himself, "he'll think I'm wondering why he doesn't take it in." He smiled grimly. "Well, that would be God's truth; but he sha'n't know it." So he stood and gazed steadily seaward.

Now it was surely day--day that showed itself in a gray sea leaping against a gray sky. A driving mist, too vaporous to be called rain, gave the same neutral tone to the vessel, which seemed to have lost her individuality overnight. She had the tired, lifeless look of the men on her deck; and as she groaned and whined along the watery road, her aspect was at once human and wholly sad. Though they were far to the south, the mist was cold upon their faces. Now and then a dash of spray flew across the quarter-deck, and its greater warmth was pleasant in comparison. By eight o'clock the water in the hold had gained six inches, and the crew were beginning to lose heart.

The group that gathered in the cabin that day had the restlessness of people waiting to start on a long journey. In her growing fear, Mrs. March hungered for companionship; she steadily kept to the cabin, refusing to go to her room, but half-sat, half-reclined upon the lounge, and watched the wooden walls reel about her. Whenever an unusually heavy sea rolled them down, she gripped the back of the lounge and prayed in silence; and when it passed she looked about her with a spent face. Hetty and Miss Stromberg sat in steamer-chairs, talked a little, and sometimes laughed without reason; from time to time they staggered to their room, never remaining long, or losing for a moment the aspect of being about to do something quite different. Drew tried to be cheerful, but felt that he was only inane; now and then he read in a book that at other times he held closed over his finger. All day Lieutenant Stromberg sat at the table and played solitaire, resolutely forbearing to cheat himself, being restrained by the thought that he might be near his last hour. At times he made jokes that no one seemed to understand, and then looked up wonderingly when he laughed alone.

It was afternoon when Hetty, unable longer to bear the thought of the dark, close cabin,--all the windows had now been battened down and the skylight covered,--made her way to the forward companionway, and, opening the doors, looked out upon the deck with eyes wide with wondering fear. The leeward rail was level with the sea, which boiled about it; the deck ran like a mill-race. The sky was lost in the driving mist, which closed about them in a gray wall that seemed like a barrier to hide the impending dangers beyond. Clinging to the door, she stepped out upon the deck and glanced aft. The wind beat her down like a flower-stalk, and she crouched upon the door-step. But Medbury had seen her, and hurried to her side.

"You mustn't stay here; you know you mustn't," he protested. "We may ship a sea at any time." He himself was dripping, and his face was rosy with the damp wind: he looked like Neptune's very brother.

"Yes," she cried; "yes; I'll go in a minute. I couldn't stand it down there another second." She lifted her face above the house for an instant, and nodded aft. "What is that for?"

Above the taffrail, from quarter to quarter, a stout piece of canvas had been stretched between two upright poles, shutting off the outlook astern. Medbury glanced toward it before he replied.

"That?" he said. "Oh, to keep the spray off the glass of the binnacle. It clouds it so the men can't read the compass." It did not seem to him wise to tell her that it was to keep the helmsmen from glancing over their shoulders at the following seas, and perhaps losing their nerve at a critical moment. "Please go down now; it makes me nervous to see you here."

She crouched down upon the door-step and looked up at him with a smile.

"I didn't suppose you were ever nervous," she told him.

"Well, I am, about you--any woman, in a sea like this."

"Oh," she murmured, and looked away, thinking of his qualifying "any woman." He had never spoken like that before--classed her with other women. It showed that he had accepted the situation, and she told herself that she was glad; nevertheless, it was not an unmixed gladness: for the first time she felt that something had gone out of her life that she had always calmly accepted as being as unchanging as her native hills. Yet it seemed unreasonable that it should sadden her. With a little shrug of impatience she put the thought away just as he leaned to speak to her again.

"Won't you go below now, Hetty?" he said, with a touch of impatience. "I can't stay here."

"I've not asked you to," she replied.

"You know what I mean well enough," he said. "I can't leave you here alone. You are a little tease, for all you can be so dignified at times."

"If you call me names, I shall certainly be dignified," she declared. She looked away as she added: "You wouldn't call Miss Stromberg a tease, I'm sure."

"She's a little flirt," he answered promptly.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"Oh, I just think so. The dominie says she isn't, though. It's only fair to say that," he replied.

"I _wondered_ what men found to talk about so much," she said.

He did not think it necessary to answer this, but stood looking out over the deck with unseeing eyes. A wave broke at the side, leaped up, and swept across the deck in a sheet of spray.

She gasped as it struck her face, and then she laughed.

"You see," he warned her. "The next time it may be worse."

"It's better than that stuffy cabin," she answered, feeling an exhilaration in the salt spray and the wind. There was comfort in his presence, too, though she hardly acknowledged it to herself. It had needed this storm and the danger to bring back to her all her old ideals of manliness, cherished in her girlhood in the little seaport, but weakened by her later acquaintance with a widely different life.

She looked up suddenly and said:

"Can't we still be friends, Tom--just friends?"

"I'm your friend," he answered. He did not look toward her as he spoke.

"You wouldn't speak to me yesterday."

"I was a fool," he said, still looking away from her.

"It hurt me," she said. She paused, but he did not speak, and she went on: "We can always be friends, then, can't we?"

For a moment he did not speak or look at her.

"Oh, yes," he said at last; "we'll be friends. I'm going back to the old long voyages again as soon as I can--in Santa Cruz, if your father will let me off. In a year or two, or perhaps three, I may go back home, and we may meet on the street, and shake hands, and smile, and you will go away satisfied. 'He's my friend yet,' you may say, and maybe think of me again in a year or two, or perhaps meet me and bow as we pass. Or, more likely, _you_ will go away, and, coming back again after a long time, meet a bent, brown old man and not recognize him. Or you may ask about me, and be told: 'Oh, he died long ago, in the South Pacific or Japan, or some other God-forsaken place.' 'I knew him long ago,' you'll say, and then go on asking about others. I guess that's what friendship like ours comes to mean."

He turned to her as he ceased, and saw her rising to a stooping position under the low sliding-hood. Her face was white.

"I'm going below now," she said.

"It's best," he answered; "I'm afraid to have you here."

She descended two steps and then turned.

"You are cruel," she said. Her voice trembled.

"What did you say?" he asked.

He leaned over toward her, for the gale had drowned her words.

"I said, 'You are cruel.'"

"Oh," he said vaguely, and watched her as she disappeared below.

XIII

In the cabin Lieutenant Stromberg was still playing solitaire; at the opposite side of the table his sister sat, with Drew beside her, reading aloud, as she took a lesson in English.

"Da sea grows sto'-mee, da lit' ones mo-own, But, ah-h, she gafe me nef-fair a lo-o-ok, Faw her eyes weh seal'd tow da holy bo-o-ok! Loud prays da pries'; shot stahnds da do'. Coam avay, chillen, call no mo'! Coam avay, coam da-own, call no mo'!"

"Yo' pro-nouns doze _d_ in 'chillen'?" Her concerned eyes flashed an anxious look up at Drew.

"Yes," he answered--"'children.'"

"Chil-d'en. Iss das mo' betteh?"

He bowed gravely, but said:

"You must pronounce the _r_, too."

She shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

"Ah t'ink doze _ahs_ ve'y dif_fi_cult tow pro-nouns. Alone, no; but wiz doze ot'er let's doze bec-ome los'." She laughed again.

"Coam avay, chil-_dahn_, call no mo'! Coam avay, coam da-own, call no mo'!"

She turned a bright look upon Hetty.

"Meesteh Drew all tam rid doze po_et_ry; so Ah say tow tich me doze lang-widge mo' betteh," she explained. "Ah was tich tow rid doze Anglish by ma home tow Denmahk, but Ah leahn tow spik eet off ma black maid tow St. Croix. She spik ve'y nize, but so sho'tly, Ah unnehstahnd heh not alwis."

"Shortly?" repeated Hetty, in doubt.

"Fastly, ra_pid_ly," explained Lieutenant Stromberg, looking up from his cards. "Ma sisteh's Anglish iss only a second coosin off das real Anglish--second coosin twice remove'--t'r-rough Denmar-r-k and Afr-r-rica." Lieutenant Stromberg knew his _r's_.

"I think she speaks beautifully, with such opportunities," Hetty replied, with spirit.

Miss Stromberg beamed her thanks.

"Ah t'ank yo' exceedin'," she said. She looked at her book, sighed, looked up again, and continued: "But doze po_et_ry mek me tow haf doze sadness--me." She sighed again and shook her head. "Yo' lak doze po_et_ry?"

"Not always," Hetty answered frankly.

The questioner laid the book hesitatingly on the table, and her hands drifted together in her lap.

"Ah t'ink das iss mos' coh'ect," she agreed. "Eet iss not alwis poss_i_ble tow lak eet when yo' s'all t'ink off ot'er t'ings--doze noise' and stohms," she explained.

"Yet yo' s'all desire to heah doze noise' ofer once mo' when yo' rich St. Croix," said the lieutenant, without looking up from his game. "'Ah, doze beau-tiful noise'!' yo' s'all say--'so poe_tic_al!'" He laughed mischievously.

"We shall miss many things when we reach St. Croix," said Drew, looking at them and smiling.

Hetty glanced at him, then she leaned forward and put her hand on the Danish girl's arm.

"We shall miss you," she said softly.

"Ah, no!" Brother and sister spoke together. He turned and bowed to his sister smilingly.

"Ah, no!" she repeated; "yo' s'all coam at our house alwis; da do' s'all stahnd wide faw yo' fawefer." Her eyes included them all in the invitation.

"Ah wass going tow spik doze sem lak ma sisteh," said the brother, with a magnificent bow.

"I shall bring the book," said Drew, touching it. "It may go better there."

"Shuah-lee!" laughed the Danish girl. "And yo' s'all rid eet in doze gahden, among doze floweh' mos' beautiful, wiz doze o'ange-tree' and t'ibet-tree' meking doze cool shadow, and doze sea-watah fah _be_-low shining in da sun. And noise--yo' s'all heah on-lee doze sea-watah mu'_mu_'ing soft-lee, and doze fountains whispehing, and poss_i_bly a lil' song ofehhead, and maybe some dahkies pahssing _be_-hin' doze high wall, calling tow sell yo' some t'ings ve'y nize--and nut'in' mo'."

"Hot arepa! hot arepa dem! Ya da hot arepa!" In a high, slurring singsong Lieutenant Stromberg gave the cry of the negro women street-venders.

"Yas; das iss eet," said his sister. "Yo' t'ink das iss nize?"

"Ah, it would be _living_ poetry!" Drew answered.

She smiled, looked up, caught his gaze; her own dropped to her hands clasped in her lap.

"Das iss mo' nizeh dan heah?" she asked demurely.

"I shall never want to go away," he told her.

"And when doze hurricane coam," began her brother, "how--"

"Sh-h!" she exclaimed, while her eyes bubbled with laughter. "Why spik off doze when we go-ing _in_-vite peop' at ouah house? Pos_si_bly doze coam not aany mo'--doze huh'icane."

"Pos_si_bly not," agreed her brother.

"Aanyway," she continued triumphantly, "doze huh'icane nefer hu't us."

For a moment Mrs. March had forgotten the rolling vessel and the threatening sea. "The little tyke!" she said to herself, smilingly; but her daughter spoke aloud.

"Why do you make such a beautiful picture of it?" she asked. "Don't you know that I must go back to the cold and the snow?"

Miss Stromberg laughed, and shook her head.

"Yo' s'all cah not," she answered. "Yo' s'all say, 'Oh, doze huh'icane!' Wheah da heaht iss, da iss da beautiful pictu'. So womens ah med," she added wisely.

"And is your heart there--in that garden?" Drew asked. He smiled.

She laughed again.

"'Tiss joost heah--and unfast," she replied, and placed her hand on her breast. "Eet hass no feexed 'abitation."

On deck they heard the tramp of feet going aft, and then, as the starboard side lifted, the cry of the crew hauling in the main sheet, and the hoarse croak of the blocks. Before the tramp was heard again, going forward, Captain March came from his room and hurried up to the deck.

Medbury walked over to his side.

"The wind's hauled around a little, sir. We couldn't keep the course."

Captain March looked aloft, then glanced at the compass.

He gave no sign of having heard. Suddenly he stopped short and gazed forward.

"What's that contraption you got there, Mr. Medbury?" he asked.

"One of the flanges of the pump gave 'way, sir," answered the mate, "and we couldn't use but one bar; so I rigged up that whiz-jig. It's better than one bar, and, besides, we can work it from the poop. If things should get much worse, the men would drown on the main-deck."

"Does the water gain on you?" the captain asked.

"About the same--inch by inch. But she's getting a little logy, it seems to me; and if the wind should go down or haul ahead--" He paused in gloomy silence.

"It won't," said the captain.

He walked to the rail and took down the marking of the log-line, and then went below to lay out his position on the chart. For two days he had had no sun to take an observation, and could trust only to dead-reckoning. Carefully he laid out his course and marked the distance traveled, then tried to calculate how far the heave of the sea and the set of the current had modified his right position. At last he pricked out the spot with all the appearance of certainty, made a light ring about the dot, and was rolling up his chart as his daughter came to his side.

"Where are we now, father?" she asked.

He looked at her and smiled.

"Just about here or hereabout," he told her.

She took the chart from his hand and unrolled it.

"Where are we?" she demanded.

His stubby finger pointed to the dot.

"It's a long way to go yet," she sighed. "I hoped we were nearer."

As she spoke, the stern of the brig seemed to sink to a great depth, swing wide, then settle again, and there came a crash of falling seas upon the deck, and a wave went hissing across the house, falling in sloppy cascades before the window facing forward, which had not been battened. An instant later the captain was on deck.

The canvas screen about the taffrail was flapping loose from one of the poles; Medbury, with dripping oilskins, was at the wheel with one of the helmsmen, but the other was under the lee rail with his head down in his hands.

"That was a heavy one, sir," called Medbury as he bent to the spokes. He straightened up, panting, and nodded to the man who was down. "Don't think he's much hurt," he shouted.

Captain March walked over to the sailor, and, leaning over him, took him by the shoulder.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

The man rose slowly to his feet, shaking himself.

"I struck my head against the bitts," he said slowly. "I guess it stunned me for a minute."

"Where?" asked the captain.

The man, with fingers that trembled, slowly unbuttoned his sou'wester, took it off, and fumbled about his head. The captain watched him.

"Well, you better look out next time," he called with mild severity, which stopped short of positive reproof. "I guess you were watching over your shoulder more'n you were your course. Well, now you go forward and send Charlie aft."

He walked toward the wheel, but Medbury said:

"I'll hold on here a spell, sir."

"No," said the captain; "I'll take a hold. Just get that canvas lashed up again, will you?" Then he took the wheel, which he was not to leave again, except for one brief moment, until the end.

When Medbury had lashed the screen fast, Captain March nodded to him to come near, that he might speak.

"Better start your topsail-sheets a bit," he shouted. "They'll lift a little and ease her. Give 'em about two feet--no more'n that."

As the afternoon wore on, the wind increased in force and the sea grew heavier. Now and then a sharp shower swept past, and ceased suddenly; but the clouds did not lift, and the rack flew overhead, low down, like steam from a huge exhaust-pipe. At seven bells a topgallantsail-sheet parted, and by the time the sail was housed and the yard lowered it was dusk.

As Medbury prepared to go aft again, he paused by the fore-rigging and looked up. The canvas was thundering like a drum corps; the lee rigging swung slack, but that to windward was as stiff as iron, and shrilled like a score of fifes or roared like organ-pipes.

"Oh, shut up!" he said aloud, and then grinned shamefacedly at his irritability.

As he came to the steps leading up to the poop-deck, he paused and looked about him. It seemed to him that the wind had suddenly ceased, and he could hear it far away, roaring back a defiance through the murky twilight. The next moment he heard the captain shouting to call all hands and shorten sail.

With the crew increased by the men from the lost Danish bark, they had all things made snug and fast in an incredibly short time, and under maintopmast-staysail with the bonnet out, lower topsail, and foretopmast-staysail, they were rolling down the long seas in leisurely fashion by the time night was fairly upon them.

Still panting with his heavy exertion, Medbury was standing by the taffrail, looking down at the foam that now seemed only to creep by them, and thinking gloomily of the water rising in the hold, when suddenly he became aware of an increase in the weight of the wind upon his face. He looked up, but, seeing nothing, glanced down again; but in that brief moment the foam had disappeared, and he was gazing into blackness. He turned quickly, only to see that the same darkness had swallowed up the men at the wheel and every part of the vessel. The binnacle-light was burning, but the dim glow stopped short at the slide: beyond that it seemed to have no power to go. With an indescribable sensation of being absolutely cut off from every living thing, he stepped quickly toward the wheel, and, putting out his hand, touched his captain. It gave him a curious feeling of intense relief. Then he heard Captain March speaking in a calm voice that quieted him instantly.

"Is that you, Mr. Medbury?" he said. "What's wanted?"

"It's getting black, sir," he said--"black as a nigger's pocket."

"I noticed it," said the captain.

"It came on all of a sudden," the mate went on. He wanted to hear his voice and the voice of the captain: in some curious way even the trivial words seemed to mitigate the awful darkness.

"Maybe you'd better get out some lines for the men at the pumps, and make 'em fast across deck," continued the captain. "We can't afford to lose anybody overboard. And bring us some, too. When you've done that, just go down to your room, as if you'd gone to fetch something. Maybe it'll help the women-folks a little to see somebody from the deck before it begins," he went on in a matter-of-fact voice. "But don't stay. I may want you any minute."

In haste, and with hands that fumbled a little, Medbury rigged stout life-lines across the deck for the men at the pumps; and, leaving straps for the captain and his companion at the wheel, descended into the cabin. He struck a match in his room, and looked about him vaguely, smiling to himself at his purposeless errand at a time when moments were fraught with life or death. He was not, like his captain, a man of imagination: his mere passage through the cabin seemed only a bit of fanciful foolishness of which he was a trifle ashamed.

His match flickered and went out; for a moment he stood staring before him in the darkness, hearing the voices of those in the cabin as they talked together. He heard Drew's deep tones, and Hetty replying to them, and a sudden impotent rush of jealousy overwhelmed him as he thought that he must battle on deck in what might be their last fight, while this man, who had known her barely as many days as he had loved her years, would be with her in these last hours. Blindly, without looking to right or left, he walked through the cabin and ascended to the deck.

Though he had been below only a moment, an amazing change had taken place. As he seized the hasp of the door to open it, the pressure from the outside was so great that for a moment he thought that some one was leaning against it. He knocked on it loudly, then pushed again, becoming immediately aware that the resisting force was wind. Then throwing all his weight forward, he squeezed through, with the door slamming to behind him.

It was only the beginning. The seas seemed to grow momentarily heavier, and it became impossible to stand erect upon the deck. When Medbury went forward to the pumps, as he did from time to time, he went with bent body, keeping his hand upon the rail. His face was stiffened with salt, which clung to his eyelashes and had to be wiped away constantly. It became in time no longer possible to distinguish sounds: the bellow of the wind, the roar of the sea, the thunder of the canvas, and the groaning of spars and timber, became merged in an indescribable tumult, the waves of which, like a great sea of sound, seemed to rise about them and beat them down into insignificance. In this strange melting away of all the known landmarks of his craft, Medbury stood at times helpless and irresolute, and doggedly awaited the end.

To those shut up in the cabin there came, as the night wore on, a sense of impending danger. Once, unable longer to bear the feeling of isolation from those who were fighting on deck for their lives, Hetty made her way with difficulty to the companionway, and, mounting to the doors, tried them. Then she turned.

"They have locked us in!" she cried, staring down at her companions. The lamp, swinging in its gimbals, cast only a faint light upon their upturned, startled faces. Her lips trembled. "It makes me afraid," she faltered.

Miss Stromberg burst into tears. Hetty hurried down to her, and, sitting close together on the lounge, the two clasped each other's hands, listening. The men sat with closed eyes for the most part. Mrs. March had long before gone to her room.