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."

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.

---