"Huh! I'd be pretty sick before I'd let a smooth duck like him give me any doses—Beg pardon, Captain Barry. Yes, sir, I think he's quite a nurse," returned the mate, half committing himself before he could pull up. Barry let the slight outburst pass without comment.
Vandersee relieved the deck for the first watch, from eight o'clock until midnight, and Barry remained on deck with him. A red sun had dipped below the sea line two hours before, and a faint breeze sprang up at his setting. Now the Barang leaned slightly to full canvas and snored easily through the phosphorescent seas with a pleasant tinkling of running wavelets along her sides. Overhead the heavens were luminous with sparks of ultra brilliance; the decks and sails of the ancient brigantine were bathed in soft radiance, ruled across and along with bars of blackest shadow. A softly noisy chorus of sea voices kept rhythm to the swaying of the tall spars, and from somewhere out in the shimmering sea came the sob and suck of a broken swell over a submerged reef.
A brown man stood at the wheel like a brown wooden figure, his arms and face vaguely illumined by the glow from the binnacle lamp. Forward the decks were silent and deserted, except in one spot. Here a thin bar of yellow light slashed in two the shadowed shape of the galley, eclipsed at intervals as the cook inside moved to and fro in his business of preparing dough for the morning's bread.
The spell of the night fell over Barry. He sent his thoughts ahead, dreamily, trying to peer into the future as if to see what it would hold for him. But the picture invariably dissolved as soon as it was conjured out of the mists, and in its place glowed the vision of a girl in Mission dress, simple and sweet: the girl whose good name he had defended; whose picture now lay in the lid of his chronometer box, where he must see it every time he went to his room.
Vandersee asked permission and went below to see Little. As he went, he remarked that it would be the last time his attentions would be necessary; the seasick Viking would be his own good man again by morning. Barry was dragged out of his dreams when the second mate spoke to him; now he shook off his fancies and walked aft to the compass. Satisfied with the steering, he passed along the poop towards the deckhouse and leaned against the lee forward corner of it, scanning the lofty, indistinct leeches of the forward canvas.
Up through the companionway floated Little's voice, and the skipper smiled at the altered tone of it. It was the voice of a man conscious of a growing healthy appetite. Vandersee's voice chimed in and died away, as if the man had gone somewhere else, perhaps in search of food for his hungry patient. There ensued a space of perhaps ninety seconds when no voice was audible. Then, like a ghostly hand out of the black beyond, something whirred past Barry's face, touched the skin lightly in passing, and thudded into the bellying mainsail.
Like a flash the skipper swung on his heel. As he turned he caught sight of the cook at his galley door; his eyes next fell upon the motionless figure of the helmsman; with the one motion he shoved his head through the deckhouse window and swept a keen searching look around the interior. It was undoubtedly empty.
He stepped over to leeward without remark and looked for the missile in the hollow of the sail foot. Nothing there. But following the canvas upward, he detected a clean slit in the cloth and passed under the boom to follow his clue. Then, by the rail in the coil of the main-gaff-topsail-halliards, he saw something glitter and picked it up.
"A pretty joke gone adrift!" he muttered, balancing the glittering thing in his palm. "Now who the devil threw that?"