"What's the use? You want all the sleep you can get, because you an' me have got to sail my smack into Yarmouth. But I was minded to call you, lad," he said, with a sort of cry leaping from his throat. "The wave struck us at about twelve, and it's been mighty lonesome on deck since with Willie callin' out of the sea. All night he's been callin' out of the welter of the sea. Funny that I haven't heard Upton or Deakin, but on'y Willie! All night until daybreak he called, first on one side of the smack and then on t'other, I don't think I'll tell his mother that. An' I don't see how I'm to put you on shore in Denmark, after all."
What had happened Duncan put together from the curt utterances of Captain Weeks and the crazy lamentations of Rail. Weeks had roused all hands except Duncan to take the last reef in. They were forward by the mainmast at the time the wave struck them. Weeks himself was on the boom, threading the reefing-rope through the eye of the sail. He shouted "Water!" and the water came on board, carrying the three men aft. Upton was washed over the taffrail. Weeks threw one end of the rope down, and Rail and Willie caught it and were swept overboard, dragging Weeks from the boom on to the deck and jamming him against the bulwarks.
The captain held on to the rope, setting his feet against the side. The smack lifted and dropped and tossed, and each movement wrenched his arms. He could not reach a cleat. Had he moved he would have been jerked overboard.
"I can't hold you both!" he cried, and then, setting his teeth and hardening his heart, he addressed his words to his son: "Willie! I can't hold you both!" and immediately the weight upon the rope was less. With each drop of the stern the rope slackened, and Weeks gathered the slack in. He could now afford to move. He made the rope fast and hauled the one survivor on deck. He looked at him for a moment. "Thank God, it's not my son!" he had the courage to say.
"And my heart's broke!" had gasped Rail. "Fair broke." And he had gone forward and sung hymns.
They saw little more of Rall. He came aft and fetched his meals away; but he was crazed and made a sort of kennel for himself forward, and the two men left on the smack had enough upon their hands to hinder them from waiting on him. The gale showed no sign of abatement; the fleet was scattered; no glimpse of the sun was visible at any time; and the compass was somewhere at the bottom of the sea.
"We may be making a bit of headway no'th, or a bit of leeway west," said Weeks, "or we may be doing a sternboard. All that I'm sure of is that you and me are one day going to open Gorleston Harbour. This smack's cost me too dear for me to lose her now. Lucky there's the tell-tale compass in the cabin to show us the wind hasn't shifted."
All the energy of the man was concentrated upon this wrestle with the gale for the ownership of the Willing Mind; and he imparted his energy to his companion. They lived upon deck, wet and starved and perishing with the cold—the cold of December in the North Sea, when the spray cuts the face like a whip-cord. They ate by snatches when they could, which was seldom; and they slept by snatches when they could, which was even less often. And at the end of the fourth day there came a blinding fall of snow and sleet, which drifted down the companion, sheeted the ropes with ice, and hung the yards with icicles, and which made every inch of brass a searing-iron and every yard of the deck a danger to the foot.
It was when this storm began to fall that Weeks grasped Duncan fiercely by the shoulder.
"What is it you did on land?" he cried. "Confess it, man! There may be some chance for us if you go down on your knees and confess it."