Part 9

Once there came three unusually heavy seas, and as the brig rolled down it seemed to Hetty that they never would rise again, and, closing her eyes, she prayed silently. Then there came the long "smooth," and she opened her eyes and smiled upon her companion.

"That is better, isn't it?" she whispered.

"Ah do not lak eet," Miss Stromberg whispered back. "Ah ahm affred, also--me."

Hetty patted her hands.

"It will be better soon," she said.

"Do yo' t'ink Ah s'all be los' once mo'?" asked the girl. "Ah ahm tow lit' tow was'e all doze sto'ms on--me." She laughed hysterically.

"No, no!" cried Hetty. "You will be home to-morrow--in that garden."

"Oh, doze gahden! Eet sims a t'ousand woilds f'om heah."

"To-morrow," continued Hetty, "this will seem like a bad dream."

"Ah pray Ah may slip mo' sound-lee," she murmured laughingly. "But yo'--yo' haf doze cou'age!" she added admiringly.

"I trust my father," replied Hetty. She was gaining courage by imparting it.

"And das young of_fic_er?"

"Yes," said Hetty.

"Yo' lak him mooch?"

"I've known him all my life."

"Das iss ve'y nize." She turned suddenly to Drew. "Wass yo' t'ink off?" she asked him.

He looked at her and smiled.

"I was thinking of your garden just then," he replied.

"Ah!" she murmured delightedly. "Yo' joost da sem lak us!"

"You were thinking of it, too?" he asked.

"Dees ve'y minute. Das iss ve'y nize--tow t'ink doze sem t'ings altowgeddeh."

"Eet iss a ve'y nize gahden," said Lieutenant Stromberg, "but eet iss not so nize as yo' s'all t'ink. Nut'in' iss," he explained. "Eet s'all _bec_-ome dull--lak dees, lak efer't'ing. Me--Ah s'all play doze cahds." He laughed, and, taking his cards from the glass rack, began another game of solitaire.

XIV

One by one the idlers in the cabin went to their rooms, and Drew, putting on a storm-coat, stepped out upon the deck from the forward companionway, blinded for a moment by the darkness.

Slowly the shadowy world took on blurred outlines, and, turning his gaze to windward, he saw gray flashes of foam leap high on the pointed crests of waves, and drop quickly into darkness. The gale tore at him and beat him down. He remembered that he had seen a sou'wester in his room, and went softly below to get it. As he opened the door that led from the passageway to the cabin, Hetty, with swinging arms, went staggering across the unsteady floor toward the pantry. With a little thrill of joy at finding her alone once more, Drew hastened to her side.

She was on her knees, peering about her; but, startled by the sudden obscurity that fell upon the room, she looked up quickly, to see him standing in the doorway.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "how you frightened me!" and turned to her search again. "I was looking for something for my mother," she explained when, a moment later, she rose to her feet. "I cannot find it." Still glancing vaguely about her, she moved toward the doorway and made as if to pass him; but he did not stir.

"Can I not help you?" he asked.

She shook her head, but did not look up.

He had sought her with no other purpose than to be by her side for a moment; for, though he had not seen her alone since he had asked her to be his wife, he knew that this was not the fitting hour for his answer: but neither could he let her go.

"I cannot bear to see you suffer," he exclaimed. "Do not think our case hopeless. It cannot be. We shall reach land yet."

"Oh, you cannot know," she said listlessly. She had no thought to be indifferent or cruel; standing, as she felt, face to face with eternity, her thoughts had passed him by. She had come to regions where he was a vague shadow, a part of a world no longer hers. She was only the sailor's daughter now; all her faith and dreams lay with those who were battling on the deck for the lives of all.

Silently he stepped aside, and she went quickly to her room, closing the door behind her and not looking back.

He could not summon to his mind a single thread of proof; yet, as he turned away, he knew that unconsciously she had given him her answer. The closing door between them, he told himself, was the symbol.

He was paler when he went up the companionway again, and his lips were firmly closed; but there was no harshness in their lines, and he carried his head high: clearly he would bear whatever life brought to him.

A moment later, as he stepped into the blinding darkness of the deck, a wave broke near, and a sheet of water, clipped from the toppling crest by the wind, swept across the house and struck him like a lash. Staggered for an instant, with his hand slipping from the sliding-hood, he dropped behind the house.

He was still kneeling on the deck, brushing the water from his eyes, when he felt rather than heard or saw some one go by. He would be sent below, he knew, if seen by the captain or the mate; and he smiled as he thought of his position, feeling like a schoolboy in mischief and in danger of detection. Slowly he turned, and, without rising, watched the passing figure.

It was six bells, and Medbury had come forward to change the crew at the pumps. As he stepped past the house and made his way to the life-lines, he lifted his eyes and stopped short. The pumps were deserted. Then he rushed forward and peered down upon the main-deck; only the sloppy space showed itself, unrelieved by a human figure. One of the down-hauls of the whiz-jig, whipping in the gale, snapped across his face, and was flung irritably aside.

In the first rush of his dismay the thought came to him that all were lost; but the possibility of four men being swept away without warning was too much to believe, and across his mind there flashed the certainty that the crew had refused longer to work the pumps. That they had been losing heart had been borne in upon him increasingly, and now that he stood face to face with the desperate situation he felt his face grow hot with the fury that seized him and bore him out of himself. Some instinct told him that they had taken refuge down the booby-hatchway, and he sprang to the sliding-hood, thrust it back, and peered in. It was black and still, but the intangible something that betrays the presence of human creatures seemed to pervade the place, and he knew that his quarry was there. His voice choked with fury as he yelled:

"You damn' curs--you--you--want to ruin us all! Out of this--quick, or I shoot you down like rats in a hole!"

No sound came out of the black interior, and with a snarl of rage he tore open the door, splintering the peg in the hasp, thrust one foot over the sill to descend, and struck the back of a man. The next instant he had the man by the collar, lifted him struggling to the deck, and with a mighty swing sent him forward into the life-lines, where he hung for a second, and then fell lightly, like a sprawling cat, to the main-deck. With a snarl, Medbury swung himself into the opening, and dropped between decks. Three men had been sitting on the steps below the man he had thrown out, and he swept them off like leaves from a wand, and he heard their smothered groans as he crushed them together in a heap on the floor. He was in his own province now, for the storeroom was his care, and he could have found a sail-needle there in the dark; and as he freed himself from the sprawling bodies under him, he swung about him, reaching out, with itching hands, for his cowed and dispirited crew.

He felt an arm encircle his legs, and kicked back viciously, feeling rather than hearing his heel crunch against a face. The arm about his legs dropped limp, and he felt another pawing along his shoulders and reaching for his throat. With a quick thrust he found a bristly face, and, striking straight with his free arm, sent the man tumbling to the floor. He heard the sound of feet stumbling up the stairs, and thought the fight was won, and so moved back, only to find shoulders and legs clasped by other men. He clasped back, and the next moment was staggering about the place in a hand-to-hand struggle. He kicked himself free again, and with a quick thrust forward threw himself to the floor, an opponent under him. He heard the sailor's head strike hard, felt his hold relax, and rose, panting, to his knees as a lantern swung in at the door, and Captain March's voice, cool and incisive, called, "Stop right there!" Looking up, Medbury saw the light of the lantern shining along the barrel of a pistol, and the captain's impassive face above it.

They put every man at the pumps, lashing them to the life-lines, and, with a belaying-pin in his hand, Medbury stood guard over them and rushed them at their work. Now and then a fitful flash of lightning showed the men and the deck against a background of vitreous green glare.

Captain March watched them a moment, and then, placing his hand on his mate's shoulder, yelled at his ear. Even then the words seemed far away and indistinct.

"Keep 'em going! Don't let 'em slack up a bit!" he roared. "Never had such a lot aboard a vessel of mine before. It makes me sick."

"Yes, sir," shouted Medbury, grimly.

"Don't understand it," went on the captain in an aggrieved, plaintive voice; "nobody could." He paused irresolutely, and then said: "Hurt you anywhere?"

"Oh, no," answered the mate. "Guess I rather enjoyed it for a change. Was pretty mad."

The captain nodded, and was turning away when Medbury put out a detaining hand.

"How'd you know?" he shouted.

"What?"

"How did you know about it--the row?" Medbury asked again.

"The dominie saw something was wrong, and told me. Got your lantern, too. Good man--seemed to know what to do. Rather surprised me--don't think they've got that sort of horse-sense, as a rule. But no business on deck to-night. Told him so." Then he staggered aft, and took the wheel from the second mate again.

Drew had gone below when the crew went back to the pumps; but he was strangely excited. He knew that he could not sleep, and in a state of mental helplessness he sat for a long time upon the edge of his bunk. Something of the significance of the scene on deck broke in upon him, and he realized that the crew had given up hope. It was not revolt, but a dumb, sheeplike acquiescence in fate. In his heart he was not without a certain sympathy for the men, feeling in the overpowering mastery of the storm something of the vanity of all human endeavor. Yet the mere effort of holding himself in check, aloof from all the tumult of the deck, grew momentarily more and more unbearable, and, rising at last, he went up to the companionway door again.

He saw at once, novice as he was, that in his brief absence the situation had grown worse. There was a constant sweep of sheeted spray across the deck, and he crouched behind the house, as he had done before, both for protection and to avoid being seen by the mate. He resented the thought of being ordered below. He could see the steady rise and fall of the bodies of the men working the pumps, and Medbury standing near them. It had grown lighter, he perceived, though it was still black night.

He was beginning to grow drowsy, and for a moment shifted his position, when suddenly the brig seemed to pause and tremble, then spring to a great height, and the next moment he had the sensation of falling in a dream, and heard Medbury's voice, faint, muffled, like a voice coming from a great distance underground, screaming, "Hold hard! Hold hard!"

In a second of time, in the light of the foam that whitened the sea to leeward, he saw the deck clearly: the men crouching low above the life-lines; Medbury's face turned away, his hands grasping a line about his waist, his body braced; and behind him, rising from his knees, a man with uplifted arm about to strike. The next moment Drew threw himself forward upon the man, and at the same instant was crushed against the booby-hatch by a great weight of water. He was held there till his ears roared and flashes of light snapped before his eyes and his breath was almost gone; then he felt himself lifted and whirled along for what seemed a great distance, with the body of the man he had seized struggling in his grasp. He had at that moment the feeling that his end had come, that he was being borne far from the garden with the fountain, and from that other garden where he saw his mother kneeling with a flower in her hand and her eyes turned up to him smilingly. With these scenes standing out vividly in a dream where all things else were strange unrealities, he was suddenly awakened to life by the crash of his body against something cruelly hard, felt a sharp sting under his arm, pressed it down tight, and fell to the deck alone.

Groping in the darkness, almost breathless, half-blinded by water, he got to his feet and looked about him. He was standing by the lee rail, but the man with whom he had struggled was gone, blotted out. He remembered the sting in his side, and, lifting his hand to the place, struck the haft of a knife that still clung to his coat. Dazed and bewildered, he drew it out, and, holding it gingerly, staggered back to Medbury.

The mate looked at him in astonishment.

"You here?" he called. "You'd better go below."

"I'm going," Drew answered. "I've had enough." With that he held out the knife.

"Where'd you get that?" demanded the mate, taking it.

Clinging to the life-lines, Drew told his story briefly, and as clearly as was possible in that shrieking gale, while Medbury turned the knife over and over in his hand.

"It's that damn' steward's," he said. "He's the one I threw out. I forgot him." His voice trailed off in the tumult of the storm, and Drew leaned forward to catch the words; then somehow he understood that the mate was asking about the steward.

"Gone," Drew shouted--"over the rail. I couldn't hold him."

"Damn' good thing," replied Medbury, and gently pushed him toward the companionway.

XV

It must have been four bells when the second mate found his way to Medbury's side and told him that the captain wanted him.

"I'm to stay here," he added.

"Don't give them any let-up," Medbury shouted in his ear; "and lash yourself fast. But don't give them any let-up."

He struggled aft, and put his hand on the captain's shoulder. In the light of the binnacle-lamp he could see that the old man's face was set and grim.

"Want me, sir?" he called, and bent his head to hear.

"Yes," he heard. The captain whirled the wheel, and then continued: "Yes; go aloft; see if you can see the light on Culebra." He paused to shift the wheel, straightened up again, and went on: "These seas run--a little like shoaling water. I'd hate to run too far to the westward and fetch up on the shoals beyond Culebra. Bad enough as 'tis. Take a good look, and hurry back."

"All right, sir!" Medbury shouted, then made his way to the main-rigging, and went slowly and carefully up. The wind flattened him against the ratlines, so that it was with difficulty that he lifted arms and knees; and when the brig swung to port, he seemed to be clinging to the lower side of the rigging, so far did she roll down. "Fetlock-shrouds all the way up," he muttered to himself. When he was well above the obstructing lower topsail, he looked ahead.

Under him, near the vessel, the sea gleamed spectrally over its whole surface, but farther away it was black. The mist had lifted, and he had the impression, even in the darkness, of a wide horizon-line; but no light was to be seen. He went upward again, till the crosstrees were just above him, and looked once more.

He gazed long, sweeping the whole line of the sea ahead slowly, pausing at each point, that he might not lose the flash. The strain brought the tears to his eyes, and he wiped them with his sleeve and looked again. Something in his dizzy altitude, in the task set him and its failure, impressed him more than anything had yet done, and he began to lose heart.

"Father went this way," he muttered, "and I guess it's good enough for me. He was a better man than I am. Poor Hetty!" He looked for the light again, giving all his thought to it. Then he sighed. "I wish to God," he went on, "that we'd let her be! She wouldn't have been here if we hadn't teased her about China. I wish she was there. This is no way for her to go--a girl like her." Then slowly at last he descended to the deck.

At the wheel, Captain March was growing unutterably weary, and something like the same thoughts were passing through his mind.

"Lord," he said, "I haven't ever been much of a praying man, and I ain't going to begin now, when I can't shift for myself. I'd be ashamed. You know I've tried to do right. I ain't afraid of death, but I hate to lose the old boat. I've always had good luck, and I guess I've kind o' got in the way of thinking it was going to last. I'd like to have it. I rather expected to die at home, and be buried alongside of mother. She thought of that a good deal." Of his wife and daughter he would not trust himself to think.

He looked up as Medbury approached him, but turned his eyes away immediately. He saw that Culebra light had not been sighted.

Medbury simply shook his head and stepped back, but the captain called him nearer.

"I guess it's too early," he said. "Go up again soon, and if we haven't made it then, we'll try to get a sounding. See if that steward left any cold tea below, will you?"

As Medbury went down the companionway and into the pantry, a figure came softly out of the girls' room and tiptoed across the cabin. It was Hetty. As she neared the pantry, the swinging floor tripped her and sent her flying into the room behind Medbury's back. She giggled hysterically as he turned with a start.

"Good Lord, Hetty!" he exclaimed, "haven't you gone to sleep yet?"

"I couldn't sleep," she said plaintively. "I waited for you; I thought you'd never come." She hesitated, laid her hand on his arm, and continued slowly: "Now I want you to tell me the truth--the truth. I'm not a child. I can bear it. I know we are in great danger--isn't it so?"

He hesitated and looked away, and she dropped her hand to her side.

"You needn't tell me; I know," she told him.

"We've got a chance," he now explained. "It looks bad, I know, but we've got a chance. I guess we've got an even chance."

"We didn't think it would be like this when we left the harbor at home, did we?" she continued. "It was like a spring day, and the buds were getting red. I said the leaves would be full grown when we got back--I said so to mother." She choked back a sob.

"Don't, dear!" he pleaded. "Don't! You shall see them yet. You shall live to grow old among your trees, Hetty."

"But if I don't," she persisted, "and--anything happens, will you try to get to me? I don't want to go alone, shut up down here."

"Yes," he answered solemnly; "I'll get to you. But we're going to pull through--really."

"You will not forget!" she insisted.

He laughed softly.

"Do I ever forget you?" he asked

"No," she said; "no--and I am glad."

Then suddenly she flung her arms about his neck, pressed her cheek against his, and vanished.

When Medbury reached the deck he took the wheel while the captain drank a great draught of the clear, cold tea. Taking the wheel again, he said something that Medbury could not understand.

"What's that, sir?" he asked, and leaned forward to catch the words.

"I said you were gone long enough. Thought the teapot had got adrift."

"Yes, sir," Medbury replied. "Didn't find it right away. That steward never did leave things where you could put your hand right on them. He--" Medbury paused. He was about to say that it was the last of the steward's tea that the captain would ever drink, but changed his mind. "I won't trouble the old man to-night," he said to himself. "Morning will be time enough--if there is a morning."

The canvas screen above the taffrail had whipped itself free, and the great seas, in long ridges that seemed never to break, followed the vessel with vindictive hate. The gale beat the men down, the spray blinded them; now and then a rush of wind, coming with great fury, with a wailing cry that sprang upon them like Indians from ambush, pressed them onward along the rolling seas without motion other than the forward one. Then the wind, relaxing its hold, left the brig wallowing exhausted in the deep hollows, like a collapsing thing.

It was after one of these outbursts that Medbury touched the captain's arm.

"Going up again," he yelled, and pointed aloft.

The captain nodded, and Medbury slanted away.

He went up deliberately, turning his eyes neither to right nor to left until he saw the crosstrees just overhead. Stopping, he thrust a leg between the ratlines to steady himself, and gazed ahead once more. It had grown lighter, and he could now plainly distinguish the blurred line where sky and water met. Suddenly, far ahead, he saw a little point of light grow out of the blackness of the night, flash for a moment, and then disappear. His heart leaped in exultation, but he waited, to be sure. Again it flashed and disappeared. Marking its position well, he hurried to the deck and aft.

"It's ahead, sir," he shouted. "Bears a point off the starboard bow."

Captain March made no reply; his face was as immobile as a figurehead. Whatever exultation he may have felt in the triumph of his reckoning, he was never to show it.

By eight bells the light was abreast, and they had hauled up on their course past Sail Rock. The gale was sweeping down through the passage, with a threatening sea, and every bit of rigging roaring and piping to the tune of the road. Suddenly, out of the blackness on their port bow a dark shape loomed, and the rock stood up almost beside them. Without changing the course a hair, they drew near, passed under its lee, with the gale dropping for an instant and the staysails flapping, and overhead, from the rock, the sound of startled sea-birds crying in the night. Then the gale rushed down again, and sea and rigging roared once more.

Medbury gave a sigh of wonder.

"Never heard anything like that before," he exclaimed.

"You can always hear them at night, if you go close enough," said the captain.

"Well, it's stirring," replied Medbury. He walked to the rail and scanned the sea with the glass. "Pity there isn't something more'n a 'bug light' on St. Thomas," he said to the captain as he walked over to his side. "We might skip right in before daybreak."

Captain March glanced over the rail.

"By daybreak we'll not need St. Thomas light," he said dryly, and bent to the wheel again.

"The old pirate!" muttered Medbury. "He's chartered for Santa Cruz, and that's where he's going! There's five feet of water in the hold, and a tearing gale loose, and a worn-out, hopeless crew; but he's going to Santa Cruz! If the wind should flop around or fall, we'd go to the bottom; but it won't. It wouldn't have the cheek--not with him. Well!"

The wind hauled over the quarter, and fell slightly; gradually the sea grew pale, and spars and sails took on more definite shape; and then all at once it was day, and they saw the sea whipped with foam, and dark masses of purplish-black clouds hanging low, with dashes of gold firing their edges in the east. St. Thomas had dropped behind them, and far ahead the cone of Santa Cruz, gray and misty under the darker clouds, was rising on the edge of the sea.

Day came on apace; the wind dropped a trifle more, but not until the harbor of Christiansted took shape, with the anchored ships lying thick in the roadstead, and the bright-hued little town clinging to the hillside above the water's edge, did the captain allow the girls on deck. As they ascended at last, white but happy, and looked out of the companionway, glancing eagerly about them, the gray, worn vessel, the dark, low-hanging clouds, the wind-swept sea, appalled them, and for a moment they could not speak.

"Eet iss not lak home," murmured the Danish girl; "eet iss mos' sad and mos' des_o_late."