Still, Appleby had seen that to protest was useless and likely to make things worse, while because the mate was cunning as well as cruel it would have been difficult to make a definite complaint even if there had been anybody to listen to him, which, however, was not the case. So he set his lips and bore it, and so as he could endeavoured to restrain Niven, who would now and then break out into fits of impotent anger or lie silent in his bunk after some fresh indignity. Had the work been always necessary Appleby would have endeavoured to do it willingly, though it was now and then almost disgusting, but the mate probably knew this, and arranged things so that he should feel he was doing most of it only to please his enemy. Grown men have been driven to self-destruction or murderous retaliation by treatment of this kind, and after a few weeks of it both lads felt they could endure no more.
Meanwhile the weather grew colder and the work harder. That was not the worst time of the year for rounding Cape Horn, but they found it bad enough, for the Aldebaran met wild weather and she was loaded heavily, while on the afternoon she lay rather more than a hundred miles to the eastwards of the dreaded cape her crew were almost too worn out for duty. She was then heading about south-west upon the starboard tack, thrashing very slowly to windward under topsails, and flooding her decks with icy water each time she poked her nose into the seas, and she did it tolerably often, for the seas were very big. They came rolling down to meet her out of the south-west, blue-black in the hollows, which were streaked with foam and frothing on their crests, and Appleby would hold his breath when one larger than its fellows rose high above the starboard bow. Most often the Aldebaran would swing up her head in time and climb over the big wall of water with a swooping lurch, while the spray that whirled up from her bows rattled like grapeshot into her foretopsails and blew out in showers between the masts. Now and then, however, she went through, and then there was a thud and roar and her forecastle was lost from sight. It seemed a long while before she hove it up again streaming, and every man held on to what was handiest when the long deck was swept by torrents of icy brine. Then while frothy wisps blew away from the forecastle and every scupper on one side spouted she would stagger on again for perhaps ten minutes more dryly, because the long ocean seas are by no means all equally steep and high.
Appleby and Niven were holding on, shivering with cold and wet through in spite of their oilskins, by a pin on the weather rail, for the deck slanted sharply and the water was washing everywhere. Glancing forward they could see nothing but spray, and every now and then the frothing top of a larger sea hove up against a vivid glare of green. When they looked up, which it was not often advisable to do, they could see the mastheads raking across a patch of hard deep blue, athwart which clouds with torn edges whirled. There was little canvas on the slanted spars, two jibs that ran water above the bowsprit, two topsails on either mast, a staysail or two between them, and half the spanker on the mizzen. The sails did not look as if they were made of flexible canvas but cast in rigid metal.
Presently a wet man came clawing his way along, and stopped when Niven called to him.
"Did you hear what we had made?" he said.
The man nodded, and growled at the spray which beat into his face. "The stooard he heard the old man and the mate a-fixing it," he said. "She's worked off about another twenty miles since noon yestidday."
Niven groaned. "Only twenty miles!" he said. "That's another week before we can square away."
"Well," said the man with a little grim laugh, "I'd give her another fortnight when I was at it. She'll take all that to fetch round with this wind, any way."
The two lads looked at each other, and neither of them said anything when in a lull between two plunges the man lurched away, but that was because they fancied he was right and both were unwilling to admit all that they were feeling.
They knew a good deal about close-hauled sailing now, for during four long weeks the Aldebaran had been thrashing her way to windward in the face of stinging gales. Sometimes when the sea was a trifle smoother she would gain a little on every tack, and then a fresh storm would come roaring down, and when they had furled the higher sails with half-frozen hands she would do little more than hold the wind upon her side and of course make nothing at all in the required direction. Also they had often to heave her to under little rags of sail with the sea upon her bow while she blew away to leeward and lost in a few hours all they had won the preceding day.