Under Rocking Skies

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!'"

"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.

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