Niven did not care for the epithet, or the grin which usually accompanied it, but he had discovered that one has to put up with a good deal that one does not like at sea.
"Of course!" he said. "But why couldn't we have gone on running?"
Montreal, the man who sat nearest the stove, laughed softly as he raised his head. "Listen to it. That's why!" he said.
There was a moment's silence, and while the Champlain rolled to leeward, and the floorings slanted under them until no man could have kept his footing, all could hear the scream of the rigging ring through the roar of the wind. It was a significant answer, but it left a little that was not quite plain yet, and Stickine nodded when Appleby glanced at him.
"It works out like this. A time comes when she'll run no longer—and then it's too late to heave her to," he said.
"Yes," said Appleby reflectively. "Of course if the sea was too bad to run before it would be too big to bring her up in, because while she was swinging round she'd catch it on her beam. Still, if you had run too long what could you do?"
"Just nothing," said Stickine gravely. "Wait until she ran under and took you down."
He stopped, and there was a thud that sent a little shiver through two of the listeners as the Champlain plunged into a sea, for they had been taught sufficient to see the picture the brief words called up. In the silence that followed Brulée leaned forward with a curious intentness in his eyes.
"Comme ça!" he said, swinging down a brown hand with suggestive suddenness. "I have seen it. We come down from Labrador in the Acadie brig, and it is blow the grand ouragan."
He drew in his breath, and gazed into the dimness as though he saw none of those about him, and then with a little shake of his shoulders stretched out a finger and pointed to Niven. "I was as young as him, and it was in the clear of the moon when the Acadie was hove to, one brought me to the rail to see the Madeleine. She was topsail schooner which load with us, and we had all the friend on board her. Whether she will not heave to, or the captain he is dare too much, I do not know, but she comes up from the spray and pass close, so close. I see the topsails black in the moon, and the jib she lift high. Then she is over run the sea, and I shut tight my eye. It is in a moment I look again—and there is no more Madeleine."