They were now getting down into the “roaring Forties,” and the stern weather characteristic of those immense southern spaces had set in. Needless to say the vessel was handled in seamanlike fashion, because she was a Yankee clipper, and it is not possible to imagine them being handled otherwise. So as the great west wind rushed out of its lair, they trimmed their yards to it, set up preventer backstays, swayed up all halyards and tautened all sheets, while the beautiful craft, like a high-mettled steed, laid herself down to her mighty race over the six-thousand-mile course.
Great was the temptation to C. B. to help in these hard doings, to join in the work when she was shipping green seas over all, but he dared not leave his wife again for one minute, for he feared what the malevolent ingenuity of the skipper might effect. And he dared not trust his father-in-law, who seemed to have developed a strange habit for him of reading himself off to sleep at any hour of the day. It looked as if the stimulus of money getting having been removed, he was sinking into a lethargy from which it would need something very urgent to arouse him. And as he was only sixty-two that was a bad sign.
Eastward, at three hundred miles a day, the good ship sped, the wind and sea holding steady and true. C. B. and his wife watched her flying over the immense combers with unconquerable energy, not lightly as the sprite-like wanderers of the ocean that floated above, but as if in full crashing triumph over all obstacles and dangers. Neither of them had ever such an experience before, but it appealed most to C. B., whose recollections of the leisurely movements of the old whaler were entirely at variance with this wonderful utilization of the wind’s power. Hour after hour they would sit watching the beautiful fabric, noting every forceful bound and lurch, their ears attuned to the great sea music, the blended chorus of wind and sea and ship all working amicably together, but all strung up to concert pitch of highest energy.
Never since that remarkable day when C. B. disarmed him had the skipper made a sign of either enmity or friendship—he had simply ignored their presence on board. But this unnatural quiet had the effect of making C. B. doubly watchful because he could not understand it, and he lived as we say a dog’s life, that is, he always seemed to have one eye open: which for a man with a poor physique and weak nerves would have been fatal, but had little or no effect upon this perfectly healthy and natural man. Still, there was one thing which troubled him, the absolute disregard of attention to the boats. As an ex-whaleman, of course, he had to look upon the boats as being always in readiness. Pretty they certainly looked, with their sword-mat gripes and their gaily painted covers, but how they were to be got out puzzled him, for there were no davits shipped.
And when he mentioned his fears to the mate, who in utter defiance of the skipper continually chummed up with him, that worthy said—
“Well, I guess it’s about the same in all merchant ships of all nations; we don’t go much on boats because we ain’t got much confidence in ’em. I know there have been boat voyages that make you gasp as you read about them, but you take the average sailor and he don’t think much of boats. And I’m a pretty average sailor too.”
This did not content C. B., but he kept his ideas to himself, saying that bad as the skipper might be, he was a No. 1 seaman, and that it was most unlikely that any harm could come to the ship.
And no one seemed to remember the nature of the cargo!
That was why, I suppose, when during the second dog-watch of a particularly strenuous day, when the ship was doing fully fifteen knots an hour on her course, nobody took any notice of C. B.’s remark that there was a smoky lamp somewhere. His keen scent had noticed it but none of the others could, being used moreover to the unpleasant fumes emitted by a kerosene lamp when it is turned down too low. Still, every now and then he would utter his complaint, until suddenly there was a cry from forrard that quickened the heart-beats of the listeners—
“There’s smoke comin’ up the forehatch.”