Together they sped back up the path to the mill, tripping over roots, stumbling on the moss-covered stones, gasping in their terrified haste. As they came near Billy heard a strange sound, the Captain’s voice surely, but high and queer and cracked, shouting out what must have been meant for a song of the sea. He went up the steps in one breathless leap and came inside the mill.
Captain Saulsby was in the middle of the room, lurching and staggering as he tried to walk, waving his arms and shouting as loud as his broken old voice would let him. Billy ran to him and tried to lead him back to the bench, but was shaken off with a quite unexpected force.
“Let me go,” he cried; “don’t keep me back; they all want to keep me back. Do they think I’ll stay below when it’s my watch?”
He staggered a step forward, swayed and collapsed upon the floor in a heap.
Somehow they got him back upon the bench and Sally tucked him in with the blankets and pillows she had brought. Yet the moment his strength revived he was struggling to get up again, shouting and raging at them both. Billy held him down with all his strength but was scarcely able to keep him quiet. At last the old man’s excitement seemed to die down a little and he lay still, apparently quite exhausted. He kept repeating, however, what he had been shouting a moment before.
“It’s my watch,” he insisted over and over in a broken whisper. “Let me go, it’s my watch.”
He lay quiet finally, and Billy and Sally, both quite worn out, leaned limply against either side of the bench.
“Will this horrible night ever end?” thought Billy. “Is there anything left now that can still happen?”
It seemed almost in answer to his unspoken words that there came again a noise above them. It was no faint creaking this time, but the unmistakable sound of running feet, the banging of a door and the slam of a window thrown suddenly wide open. There was a loud shout in the wood outside to the right of them, it was answered immediately by a second, this time from the left, and there was a heavy rustling and crashing as of somebody running at headlong speed through the underbrush. There was a quick, breathless silence, then, above them, the sound of a sharp metallic click.
Sally got up, marched to the fireplace and took down the candle that burned on the mantel.