Suddenly the swing of the choppy sea flung the woman at full length across the seat and brought her to her senses. She arose, now, and scanned the fog, then peered curiously at the medium, who was silent from very terror.
“Where are we? Where, in Heaven’s name, did you come from?” she cried, sharply, and she approached him with a searching gaze.
Trickster that he was, he sought some wile to outwit her. He mumbled something about having fallen off Fishermen’s Wharf.
She stumbled to the cuddy under the seat and brought out a lantern and a box of matches. With these she obtained a light and held it flaring in Vango’s face. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but you’ve got to help me get this boat back. Are you armed?”
The medium made an emphatic denial, for the woman’s face was sternly set. She was indubitably a quadroon, by evidence of her creamy, swarthy skin and the tight curls of her hair. Her dark eyes burned in the lamplight under heavy, knotted brows, her full lips drawing apart like a dog’s to show a line of white, straight teeth. She was the picture of Judith ready to strike, and Vango trembled under her gaze till she turned from him with an expression of contempt.
“Come aft and help me with the machinery,” she commanded. “We can’t keep on, Heaven knows where, at full speed backward through weather like this. Fi-fi, now, and mind your feet!”
They went to the tiny engine where, fumbling with the levers and stop-cocks, she brought the machinery to a stop. The silence crowded down upon them, as if someone had just died. Vango noticed that the woman kept between him and the starboard rail with some secret intent, and, as the two eyed each other, he caught sight of a revolver swinging from her belt. He saw something else, also, that made his heart stop beating for an instant; and then the quadroon held up her hand and listened attentively.
“Do you hear a bell?” she asked.
Scarcely had she spoken when in the distance a fog-whistle sang out across the water, and through the flying scud a yellow light winked and went out.
“We’re right off Alcatraz,” she said. “Here, you stand by this lever and mind my orders. Watch now, how I do it. Way forward for full speed ahead, way back to reverse, and midway to stop; and turn off the naphtha at this throttle. I’ll take the wheel, and we’ll make across for the Lombard Street Wharf. Keep a look-out ahead, and let me know the instant you see a light, or anything!”