“Thanks, my lord,” he answered, smiling back cheerily into my inquiring eyes. “Janson’s only been two hours below. I’ll give him an hour longer at least.”
“But Rafferty’s here, and I can hold the wheel, if that’s all,” said I reproachfully; “what’s the good of killing yourself, man?”
“I’ve had many a longer bout in weather no better,” and he shifted the spokes a point in his deft, unhesitating hands.
“But what’s the trouble?” I answered, almost irritated by his unswerving determination. “Why can’t we take her from you? We’ve got the sense not to let her broach to, at any rate.”
“Ice is the matter, my lord. Ice—and acres of it. You forget we’re racing back into the South at fifteen knots an hour. If the gale doesn’t drop before evening, we shall be among the bergs again. We may meet outlying floes at any moment.”
“Then we’d call you,” said I argumentatively; “so just you skip along and take a snooze with a clear conscience.”
“Thanks, my lord, I shouldn’t sleep,” he said dryly, wiping the spray from his beard, and there was nothing further to be said. I shrugged my shoulders and left him there, vigilant, alert, eternally craning his eyes into the veil of the spin-drift, a valiant warrior of the deep.
The presage of the lurid sunrise was fulfilled. All day long the gale shrieked and raved behind us, screaming through our taut rigging like some inarticulate storm-spirit’s agony. The sullen waves still thundered after us, lifting our stern, and burying our bows now and again in the crest of some laggard comber. They broke thunderously across our bulwarks, dashing themselves into a very dust of spray. It glistened snow-like in the sun-rifts, as they broke now and again through the leaden haze that hid the sky. The scud of the clouds kept pace above us, wreathing and twisting into a thousand fantastic shapes. The gulls screamed and hovered, and the petrels dipped and scurried from crest to crest. The roar of the surges and the shiver of the laboring timbers followed one upon the other monotonously. One got stupefied by their ceaseless, recurrent boom and thud.
About mid-day the stress of the night began to tell upon me. I remembered that during four-and-twenty hours of physical and mental excitement I had had no sleep. I staggered wearily down into the smoke-room, curled myself up beside Gerry’s still motionless form, and before I had closed eye a minute, sank off into dreamless unconsciousness.
The dark was falling again as I woke. Both Gerry and Lessaution had disappeared, but I could hear the bellow of the tempest strong as ever.