With chin cupped in hand I leaned upon the starboard rail in the black well of shadow which was formed by the overhang of the forecastle, and the towering piles of canvas that clothed the foremast. Somewhere beyond the wastes of watery darkness that veiled my eyes lay England, the home which had disowned me. I——
Without any warning a huge arm was twisted around my shoulders and a hand so huge that my teeth could make no impression in it was clamped down over my mouth. Another arm encircled my waist. My arms were pinned to my sides. My legs kicked feebly at a muscular body which pressed me against the bulwark. Fighting back with all my strength, I was nevertheless lifted gradually from the deck and shoved slowly across the flat level of the fife-rail.
Do what I might, I could not resist the pressure of those tremendous arms which seemed to have a reach and a power twice those of my own. I gasped for breath as they squeezed my lungs—and in gasping I sensed a queer taint in the air, a musky odor which I did not at once associate with the seamen or any one else on board the ship.
It was no use. I could not resist. The snakelike arms mastered me. One shifted swiftly to a grip on my legs. I was whirled into the air and dropped clear of the railing—falling, falling, until the cold waters engulfed me.
VII
A TRUCE
I came to the surface, fighting for breath, my hands battling fruitlessly at the slimy side of the ship, which slid past as relentlessly as the passage of time. I tried to cry out, but the salt water choked me. Not a sound came from the decks above. The blackness was absolute, except for the mild gleam of a watch-lanthorn on the poop.
Danger and the peril of death often have been my lot, but never in all my life—no, not even when the Keepers of the Trail had bound me to the torture-stake—have I experienced the abysmal fear which clutched my heart as I struggled to save myself from the chilling waters whose numbing embrace was throttling my vitality no less surely than the long arms which had cast me overboard.
Death was only a brace of minutes away—not death from drowning, but death from the bitter cold that paralyzed my limbs and smote my heart. In the mad desperation of my fear I heaved myself waist-high out of the water, hands clutching and clawing for the support which reason must have denied me to expect.
I was sinking beneath a smooth-running wave along the counter when my fingers came in contact with a dripping rope, which slipped through their grip and lashed me in the face. This time I did contrive to cry out, a brief, choked yell of exultation. My hands possessed themselves of it again, and I rove a loose knot in the end.