"It is about this affair," answered Olsen, "there is no good to be got by waiting, sir. I tell you plainly my engines will not stand so very much. And the way she is loaded, if we come up against anything in the way of a sea——"
"And you?" asked Elderkin of the mate.
"I am sure dat what Olsen say is right. It must be now or never."
"It is going to be never," replied Elderkin in his usual soft tones.
The two men stared at him, then the quicker Latin flashed into speech. He demanded, with a lapse into Island patois now and again, what the blank blank blank the captain thought he was doing. Elderkin sat through it unmoved.
"I will not speak to you as you have just done to me," he began, "because hairy, forsaken Frenchy as you are, you are still a son of God, even as I am. Praise the Lord with me, for He has shown me into what an abyss of sin I had fallen. Do you hear what I say? I am captain aboard this ship, Mr. Lemaire, and I order you to praise God for having delivered us while there is yet time."
Lemaire stared at his superior officer in total silence for a moment instead of complying. Then he turned to Olsen. The freckled Dane grasped the situation the first. He saw that the skipper was not trying to do them down as Lemaire, when he found his tongue again, accused him: that this was not some deep-laid trick to keep them out of the profits. Olsen had seen many religious revivals in the Islands and he knew the signs.
"See here, Mr. Elderkin," he said, stepping forward; "I've my side of it to think of. I've not suddenly got holy. I'm thinking of my children, same as I was before. You've never thought for anyone but yourself. I only shipped this voyage because it meant being able to do what I want for them. I've only stuck to this hell-ship for them. There's been things done aboard here that would have sunk the ship if sin could sink her. You can't clean your bloody ship by talking of God now. We all made an agreement and let's stand by it like men. Sink the ship, sir, and the top of the sea'll be the sweeter for it."
"I've been a sinful man all my days," agreed Elderkin, "but my eyes have been opened, the Lord be thanked. . . . I have been saved and by the grace of God I mean to save the ship."
"It'll take more than the grace of God to keep my engines working," commented Olsen.