CHAPTER XXI
TOMMIE
HANK and Candon were asleep, whilst George stood as officer of the watch. A great blaze of light fanning up beyond the coast hills showed the Wear Jack under all plain sail and the gulls following her, royal terns and loons and black-headed gulls, whilst far above a Brandt’s cormorant formed an escort in the blue, wheeling, dropping as though to pierce the deck, and then passing off with a cry, northward, towards the vanished islands.
Away over there to the east, fog held the lower hills and made a country of rolling snow to the sea edge, a country now white, now golden as the great sun rose above it, now breaking here and there, and now flying before the wind like the banners of a shattered army.
At eight o’clock, when they had breakfasted somehow out of materials supplied by Charley, Hank suddenly took the wheel of affairs.
Not a sound had broken the ominous silence down below and up to now the barred-out men had not spoken a word on the matter.
“It’s lucky for us we have a crew of Chinks,” said Hank suddenly and apropos of nothing, “the Chinks don’t know and if they did they wouldn’t care. If we took our breakfast standing on our heads it would be all the same to them. Well, see here, you fellows, what we going to do? We have to get done with this business right now. I’ve got a stiff back sleeping in the scuppers and I don’t propose to feed for the rest of my natural on this Chow junk. Seeing I did the talking last night, I propose going down to prospect and have a parley.”
“Right!” said the other two with a sudden brightening, as though a burden had been lifted from them.
“If she won’t open,” said Hank, as he got on his long legs, “I’ll bust that door in. You keep your ears skinned at the hatch and come along down if there’s trouble.”
They moved up close to the hatch and Hank went down. They heard his knock and almost immediately on the knock a clear voice say: “Yes?”