CHAPTER XXVIII
The Master Returns
The thought of our dead captain came to me, of what his will would have been in this crisis of life and death, and I paused to wonder why he had not rested until he was assured that I would not carry his precious treasures back with me. Did he expect this situation, and doubt my ability to cope with it? Action followed thought, and I ordered the second mate and the crew forward to see what could be done with the martingale guy.
Still the humor of the moment appealed to me. As Riley left the poop he shouted, "Be the Holy St. Patrick, it has blown the buttons off me oilskin coat." There was no question about its blowing, but it was also possible that his snakelike position on the spanker-sheet had something to do with the lost buttons.
It was now past noon. None of the crew cared to eat, preferring the wave-swept deck to anything the cook had to offer. The murderer who pays for his crime on the gallows and enjoys his ham and eggs on the morn of execution may be happy indeed, but this does not apply to the sailor. When there is a life and death battle on with the elements, he is there to grab the one last chance if there be one. If not, he prefers a watery grave to claim him with his stomach empty.
The seas kept coming larger, and every time one would break and spend itself on the decks I thought it would be the last, and that she could not arise. But she shook herself clear as she climbed the waves; then again the sea, and again the dread.
I could not leave the poop nor the two men at the wheel. A wrong turn at this howling, raging time, would mean quick despatch to the land of no awakening. Sometimes even the helmsmen grew afraid, but a word of encouragement sufficed to quiet them.
While I was standing to windward of the men at the wheel, watching her every move as she was pitched hither and thither on this crazy spiral sea, she shipped a green sea that shook her from stem to stern. It was with great difficulty that she raised her black hull to the raging storm again. I shouted to the men at the wheel. It was too late. She had broached to with the stern sea on the beam, and the beam sea right ahead.
Then the beam sea submerged her, and by it I was carried across the poop deck, and found myself held under the wheel-box, with both legs pinned in a vise-like grip by the tiller, which extended forward of the rudder-head. Although dazed and strangled by the terrible impact of the water, I managed to twist the upper part of my body towards the wheel and to murmur, "For God's sake keep her off."
My weakened voice was lost in the tempest. There were no ears to hear my pleadings. The men at the wheel were gone. Gone, indeed, to a watery grave, and perhaps the others also. With me it would not take long. Just another raking like the last one, and then the finish. Again the cook's words echoed louder than the raging storm, "Do we finish here?"