"And suppose we refuse?" asked Lemaire. "We are two to one, Mr. Elderkin. Remember, sah—if the captain is sick it is de mate who take charge of de ship. . . ."
"Mutiny? You? Do you imagine, Mossoo, that I couldn't hold my own ship against any half-breed afloat?"
"Damn you!" screamed the mate, his skin darkening with his angry blood. "If you not take care we will say you are mad, yes, mad. De men have only got to hear religion coming out of your face to believe it. De ship's not safe, and we must scuttle her now, d'you hear?"
"The men!" repeated Elderkin. "Let me tell you there never was a dago crew yet that I couldn't lick. I'll save this ship against the lot of you, I'll save her against herself—God helping me," he added.
"But we shall be ruined, all of us," urged Olsen. "What do you suppose they will say to us at Port of Spain, Mr. Elderkin? They won't be pleased to see the Spirito Santo come crawling into the roadstead with a faked cargo and all that good insurance money wasted. . . . We shall all be ruined men, I tell you. . . . What will become of us?"
"We shall never get into Port of Spain," spoke Lemaire, "we shall never round the Horn. It's coming on to blow now. She can't live through it, I tell you. It's sinking her now and saving ourselves and making a damn-big pile out of it, or it's all going down togeder."
"Then we will all go down together," said Elderkin; "if my repentance is too late the Lord will not let me save the ship nor yet my soul."
"I don't give a curse in hell for your soul, or anyone else's," cried the mate. "I tell you it's madness. Only a miracle could keep de ship afloat."
"There has already been one miracle aboard her," said Elderkin. "Who are we to set limits to the power of the Almighty? It is a small thing to keep a senseless structure of wood and iron afloat in comparison with making the blackest of sinners see the true light, which the Lord has done between two dog-watches. Yesterday I was profaning the Book with my calculations of sinful gain made out upon its pages, to-day I have been calculating how many years I have spent in following my lusts, and were the years as many as the waves of the sea, I have prayed the Lord that the weeks of striving in front of us may wipe out the years."
"He is mad," remarked Olsen, philosophically.