They were nearing the forties when Lemaire spoke. The day was wet, with a strong wind, all the morning they had been driving through tingling veils of rain and spray, shipping green water that slopped over the holds and poured in foaming torrents along the dipping scuppers. All day the wind—which till then had thrummed through the rigging and held the sails in their stiffened curves so steadily that the Spirito Santo kept a fairly even keel—had been falling on fitfulness. Loaded as she was, the seas that raced past her, almost level with her deck, seemed higher than they really were. An odd darkness held the air and through it everything bright—the flashes of foam, a wheeling bird, or rare shoal of flying fish—showed up with startling pallor. In the second dog-watch Lemaire came to Elderkin in the chart-room.
Most men have a weakness and Elderkin's—probably because he never made a confidant of a human being—was the dangerous one of pen and paper. He was making calculations on the fly-leaf of an old Bible which had been unearthed with a lot of other junk from a locker. Calculations about ships—the varying costs of handling a four-masted schooner and a barque, the advantages of chartering a small screw steamer; calculations of routes and cargoes, of many things, but always calculations. . . .
The curious darkness had swamped the chart-room, and made the discoloured clasps of the Bible and the brighter brass of the ship's fittings gleam out; made the captain's always pale face seem waxen, showed two sallow flames in the mate's ophidian eyes. For a moment the two men looked at each other in silence, then Lemaire spoke.
"I see you figger it all out," he observed. "Don't forget me, dat's all. I come in on dis, my friend. Sacré nom de Dieu"—on a sudden flash of menace—"did you think I was going to get not'ing out of it? Or perhaps you was going to drown me, eh?"
Elderkin had got to his feet, and was watching the other man steadily. When he spoke, his voice was as low and tired as ever.
He asked what the blank the blank mate thought he was talking about. Lemaire explained that he was talking about the scuttling of the Spirito Santo, and that the captain knew it as blank well as he did.
"While the ship remains afloat, kindly remember that I am in command, Mr. Lemaire, and address me with proper respect. If you do so I'll discuss business with you. If not, I'll see that you go to hell along with the ship. Savvy, you herring-gutted son of a frog-eater, you?"
Lemaire savvied. He had grown sickly hued with anger, but he spread his dark hands in apology, so that the pinkish palms seemed to flash in the unnatural gloom.
Then they got to business. What Elderkin had feared had happened—Lemaire's suspicions were aroused in port over the loading of the Spirito Santo, over the paucity of the stores taken aboard, over the many oddnesses that reveal themselves to a cunning mind when something beyond the normal is in progress. Elderkin remembered the night when Lemaire and the successfully bribed official had gone together, as he had then thought, to a rowdy house—it must have been on that occasion that the stronger man won definite confirmation from the weaker. Now there was nothing for it but to let Lemaire in on the deal—for the present.
"You are not t'inking of a storm, no?" asked the mate, when both men had laid their cards upon the table. "With our boats we should not stand a chance. . . . A fire, perhaps? We are car'n some cotton, sah, and it might have been packed damp."