Eight bells, and Frank immediately plunged below to call the skipper, and tell him that in his opinion sail should be shortened at once, for she was carrying all that she could bear with safety, and the wind was increasing so fast that it was becoming dangerous. But there was no answer to his voice, although he raised it to a shout. He went and shook the shoulder of the still form, and the chill struck through his hand to his very heart. Mr. Jacks was dead.
CHAPTER XIII
“CAPTAIN” BROWN
For a moment Frank stood speechless with that deadly chill creeping round his young heart, and his bowels all awork with dread and sympathy. But with a rush there came to him the full sense of his responsibility, the pressing need for immediate action, and the fact that he had now no one upon whom to lean. It was then that, for the first time in his life that he ever remembered, he murmured, removing his cap, “God help me!” Then, released at once from the numbness that the touch of the corpse had brought upon him, he bounded up the companion to the deck, shouting, “All hands shorten sail.”
It was a tremendous task for the handful of men, but each one was good and earnest in his work, and besides, the careful way in which the “spilling” or gathering-up gear of the sails had been arranged was an immense aid to them. So furious was the struggle that the warriors had no time to observe the absence of the skipper, and even Frank, although conscious of a curious dull pain at the heart, was far too busily employed both in mind and body to dwell upon his immense loss.
At last the ship was snugged down to two lower topsails, a reefed foresail, lower staysails and spanker, under which easy canvas she was still making good progress. Then Frank called all hands aft and made his first speech.
“I hardly know how to speak to you,” he said, “but I’ve got to. When I went down to call Mr. Jacks at eight bells I found him dead.” Here he broke down, and burst into a perfect flood of passionate tears. The men gazed at him sympathetically and silently, so he recovered himself very rapidly, almost immediately in fact. He resumed: “I can navigate the ship all right, I know, and handle her too, but I’m only a boy, and I want all the help you can give me. We’ve got another fortnight before us yet, I’m afraid, before we can possibly get home, and I want you, if you will, to try and forget my age and do just as you’ve been doing all along. And if one of you can keep a watch I hope you will take it on, because I must have some sleep.”
Then up spoke Mac, the man who had shown such signs of resentment at the beginning of this curious passage, and said: “Look here, Frank, not one of us will give ye any bother. If one does, the rest of us will trouble him properly. And for a mate you’d better have Scotty here. None of us are much of a hand at what you want, but he’s the best; don’t you think so, boys?”
There was universal assent to this; and Scotty, as sheepishly as if he had been nominated before a vast crowd, slouched forward and said: “A’ richt. I’ll keep the first watch, then, so as to let Frank go below and get some sleep. It was my watch below, but that doesn’t matter now; I’ll stick it. Relieve the wheel, and I’ll go and get some canvas, and be sewing him below there into his last suit, puir fallow.”