"They heard him whistling for a wind"Captain March stood sweeping the sea with his glass; but as they approached him he lowered it, and went silently below.

"There isn't one—not one," said Hetty, as she looked about for the dark streaks of catspaws. Three great rollers came sweeping in, and they rocked and pitched with the might of them. The girl caught at the rail for support. "It makes one think of the words, 'Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,' doesn't it?" she said solemnly.

"Yes," he answered.

"It makes me feel humble, but useless, and I do not care to feel like that," she said. "I want to be doing things. Doesn't life seem barren to you here?"

He shook his head.

"No," he replied. "Life means just as much as we put into it, I fancy, and these days have meant much for me. I should not care to have them blotted out."

She had turned abruptly just as they rolled down on a long swell, and, stumbling against the bitts, with a gasp fell outboard across the low rail.

Drew leaped toward her just in time. His hand, flashing out, caught her as she was slipping from the rail, and brought her back against his breast. For an instant he held her there.

"Hetty! O Hetty!" he gasped, as their eyes met.

"Don't! for pity's sake, don't!" she whispered, and, pulling herself free, sank upon the bitts, put her hands to her face, and laughed hysterically. In a moment she looked up.

"Don't tell them," she said. "I should not like to have them know I fell." Then she walked unsteadily toward the cabin door. Half-way there, she looked back. "I ought to thank you," she said, in a low voice, "and I do." And with that she disappeared.

Medbury, overhauling a spare sail on the main-deck, had not seen it, but the sailor with him had, and his exclamation had made Medbury turn quickly, only to see Hetty standing with Drew's arm about her. He stooped to his work again with shaking fingers; but the sailor stood still, staring.

Medbury glanced at him, his face growing white.

"Here!" he said savagely, and the sailor turned to his task again without a word.

The day dragged interminably. Hetty remained steadily in her room; through his watches on deck Medbury drove the men from one task to another with a feverish harshness wholly unusual, and which brought his watch to the forecastle at the end of the day in heated and profane weariness. Drew spent the time on deck with a book, sometimes read with slight comprehension, but more often closed over his finger, while he watched the gleaming whiteness of the sea, seeing now a school of flying-fish run like flashes of quicksilver through the long arcs of their flight, and now the dorsal fin of a shark, like an inverted ploughshare, cut the surface of the barren glebe. Even Captain March's imperturbability became less rocklike. Once he paused at Drew's side with a grumbling sound that was clearly a sigh.

"Well, it's 'Paddy's hurricane,' and no mistake," he said. "I never saw anything like it. Usually there's a little air stirring somewhere about. You'd think that something queer had got into things, wouldn't you?"

He had been standing balancing himself easily to the swing of the deck, but there came a vicious lunge, which stopped suddenly, as if arrested by a great hand, and he went staggering down the slope with swaying arms, like a collapsing sprinter. When he brought up against the rail, he talked on in a level voice that recognized no interruption:

"It's queer about a calm: there's noise enough in it if a sea's running, and it gets on your nerves; but when the wind blows again, you feel as if you'd just come out of an air-tight room, and the sound of the wind makes you want to shout. There's Mr. Medbury, now; he's been nagging the men all the afternoon as if he was afraid without the sound of his voice, like a boy whistling on a dark road. It's ridiculous in a grown man, but it's natural enough."

Drew flushed, but made no reply. He, too, had been thinking of Medbury, but his thoughts were not enviable. He had been false to a man who had trusted him, he told himself, and he had shown feeling that he had no moral right to show. It was in vain that he tried to convince himself that his right to Hetty was as great as Medbury's own; in his heart he felt that it was not. And what of the girl? he asked himself, in growing remorse. After his action of the morning, could he again meet her on the old footing of friendly fellowship? He could not go on, but how could he now draw back? In any way that he looked, he could see nothing but his moral cowardice.

In a mental restlessness that he could not allay, he rose to his feet and walked forward to the break in the deck. The sun, a copper-colored ball, was nearing the horizon, and Medbury and his men were gathering up the sail that they had been patching; one of the crew was sweeping up the deck. The querulous complaining of Medbury's voice floated aft, the human undertone in the jangling noises of disturbed nature.

For a moment Drew watched the scene before him, and then descending the steps and, hurrying across the plank that was blocked high above the water that swashed across the deck from scupper to scupper, he stopped at the galley door. The steward looked up gloomily, but, seeing Drew, showed his gleaming teeth in a perfunctory smile that had none of its usual geniality. Through the high slide in the partition between the galley and the forecastle Drew could hear the watch trooping in with angry mutterings against the mate.

The steward grinned, and jerked his head toward the forecastle.

"Yo' heah dat?" he said. "Dese heah cahms trouble-breedehs faw shuah. Ole mahn Satan done chase dat buckra mate's soul roun' de stump all eb'nin'. Two, t'ree bad mahns aboa'd dis hookeh, en two, t'ree cowahds. Dose cowahds been da worse—some dahk night. Dat buckra mate betteh watch out." He laughed.

Drew stirred uneasily. The threats of the crew and the scarcely understood warning of the West Indian steward had to his mind something of the character of a Greek tragic chorus foretelling doom, and presently he moved away out of hearing, not caring to have even negatively any part in the moving finger of Fate.

He wandered about aimlessly for a while, dreading to approach Medbury, who, now that his work was done, stood near the main-rigging with his pipe in his mouth, his spirit for the moment at peace. Drew had little knowledge of sailors, but he was sufficiently a man of the world to know that the irrepressible threats of the forecastle meant little. Still, the steward had hinted at danger, and, yielding to the other's better knowledge of his little world, Drew finally went aft to warn the mate.

Medbury looked up sharply as Drew approached, but turned his eyes away immediately. In the silence that followed neither stirred, but, resting their arms upon the sheer-pole, each seemed absorbed in the cloudless panorama of the closing day.The sun sank lower and lower; one by one the crew came out of the forecastle, and, dipping up buckets of water, sluiced themselves with the noisy abandon of water-spaniels. The pungent scent of tobacco floated aft, and now the sound of a laugh, or the scuffle of feet upon the deck. From the galley came the soft, slurred speech of the steward, lifted high in a quick exchange of wit with his forecastle neighbors, and followed by the almost continuous flood of his unrestrained cachinnation. Clearly the day was ending in peace.

This peacefulness, so at variance with the scarcely restrained passion that, a moment before, had sent him aft to warn Medbury of danger, left Drew strangely bewildered. He turned to his companion, and with a smile said:

"Do you know, a moment ago I thought that the crew was on the verge of mutiny; now I feel as if I had been dreaming. I don't understand it. They are like care-free children now. I can't believe they are such consummate actors."

Medbury turned to him and grinned.

"What made you think that?" he asked.

"I was at the galley door and heard them making threats. The steward seemed to think there was danger—to you," Drew answered. "I thought I ought to warn you; but now it seems silly."

"A sailorman's threat doesn't mean anything," Medbury told him, "and prophesying evil is the 'doctor's' trade. He's a big voodoo out home in Santa Cruz, and half the negroes on the island will go five miles out of their way to avoid him."

Drew paused a moment before speaking, then he said slowly:

"Well, my crisis was only a mare's nest, it seems. I was beginning to think it was to be a day of adventures. One seemed enough.""One?" queried Medbury, looking up sharply.

"Yes; Miss March fell across the rail. I caught her just in time. I thought you saw."

Medbury's face flushed.

"I didn't see," he said. "I didn't understand."

It was Drew's face that flushed now.

"I ought to explain," he began, but Medbury broke in:

"You haven't anything to explain to me. I'm the mate of this vessel; nothing more. That's all the interest I've got here, and all I want."

With that he walked away. He knew it was childish, but, having let himself go, he was no longer able to exercise his self-restraint till the whole madness had passed.

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