“Do ju t’ink I’m goink fur to die, kaptan?” He asked the question apprehensively.
Nickerson looked at the German shrewdly. “Naow, I ain’t sure but what you might slip your cable. I can’t tell what ails ye altogether. Ye might be injured internally. A man don’t fall sixty feet or so an’ land on a hard deck-house an’ git away with a cut finger. No, siree! One o’ yer ribs might ha’ busted an’ pierced a lung an’ ye’d bleed to death internally. Hev ye any pain thereabouts?”
“Yaw, kaptan, I have dot pain in dot place und I t’ink ju right maybe.” His owlish German face screwed up in an expression of pain as the rolling of the ship racked his injured body. He showed fear in his eyes—fear of death—and he spoke hoarsely and rapidly. “Kaptan! I ju musdt dell somedings! Ju lisden blease!”
When the skipper left Hinkel’s room, he had a curious expression upon his hard young visage. “Miserable sculpin!” he muttered. “It would be a damned good thing if he did die!” On deck again, McLean enquired respectfully, “Wull the Dutchman pull through, sir?”
“Aye, he won’t die,” came the reply. “Not much the matter with him but sheer funk, I cal’late. We’ll have to board him until we strike port, and he’ll be no more use to us than the Dutchman’s anchor what was left on the dock.” Then with a squint at the compass and a glance to windward, he continued, “Rouse the hands aout, McLean, an’ git th’ tops’ls on her! This hellion of a wind is comin’ away fair for a slant an’ we’ve got to make the best of it!” And he stamped his feet on the slushy deck and chuckled.
And they made the best of it! With a southing wind blowing stiff from the icy Antarctic wastes, they “put it to her!” as the sailors say, and sail after sail was cast loose, sheeted home, and yards mastheaded to the chorus of rousing chanteys. The crew, unkempt and unwashed, weary, wet and bruised, but rejuvenated with the thought of getting under way again to the west’ard, worked and chanteyed with a will—tugging and heaving on sloshing, rolling decks and blessing “old bully-be-damned” aft for raising a breeze which would speed them from these accursed latitudes. Let him pile the rags on! They would stand the racket, by Jupiter! No sail-carrying, no cracking-on, could affright them now after what they had gone through. They had plumbed the depths of uttermost misery. Six sanguinary weeks and three gory days banging around the back door of Tophet in a perishing, misbegotten, barnacle-bottomed barge of a ruddy work-house misnamed a barque; reefing and fisting sail in hail-squalls and sleety gales, bursting their hearts out on heavy gear and being drenched in chilly water and washed violently along and across the decks, and enduring all this for a measly pittance—they had had enough of it. Drive her or drift her! but get her away from Cape Stiff, the grey skies, the snow, frost, ice, gales, albatrosses and mollyhawks, and they would be thankful for small mercies.
Captain Nickerson paced the swaying poop smoking his pipe. Two men were at the wheel—skilled hands for lee and weather spokes. Thompson was for’ard and Martin flitted along the bridge from poop to fo’c’sle-head. The foresail and upper and lower tops’ls had been set and the barque was beginning to storm ahead under the urge of the wind in their woven fabric. “Give her th’ main t’gallan’s’l, mister,” commanded the Old Man, and when the sail was sheeted home and the yard hoisted, he studied the straining canvas and spoke again. “Set the fore an’ mizzen t’gallan’s’ls, mister. She’ll lug them. What she won’t carry, she can drag!”
Under this canvas the Kelvinhaugh stormed along, headed nor’west by west magnetic, and with the bitter gale over the port quarter hounding her through the huge grey-green seas which, in this latitude, sweep around the world.
The men, after setting the topgallantsails, dived into the fo’c’sle for a warm-up and a lay-back. The barque was driving the sprays as high as her lower mast-heads and the gear began to freeze up in the chill of the wind from off the Antarctic ice. But they didn’t care. She was making westing, and the Olympian Bluenose aft was driving his wind-harried steed up into fairer and warmer latitudes. The Kelvinhaugh, built by the mile and cut off by the yard as she was, wriggled her long body through the sea, and her blunt bows shouldered the east-bound combers and she staggered to their tremendous impact. The great Cape Horn “greybeards” roared past, seeming to say: “We’ll give you a chance now you poor devil!” when the barque would give a swaggering lift to her bows like a woman tossing her head, and she would seem to retort insolently: “The deuce you will!” as she elbowed a small half-surge out of the way. Then up would come a big brother comber, racing and roaring in the wake of the little fellow, and the ship, conceited in the irresistible weight of four thousand tons of hull, spars and cargo, would try the same tactics. Crash! Burr-r-roomb! a halt, a stagger, a thunderous roar as of a cataract, and a slow lifting as tons of chilly brine swirled through the clanging scupper-ports, and the big fellow would speed on his easterly run to Australia, hissing a warning—“Go easy, you silly trollop, or we’ll smash you, stave you, rip and rend you, and plunge you down to roost on the splintered pinnacles three hundred fathoms below!”