All through the midnight watch there was a sharp fight going on between the hatred in Jake’s heart and some new influence that seemed to be cooling and soothing the fire, he did not know how. Was he going to be a spooney, and let what he’d vowed one night die out the next, or get frightened by Ratlins’ talk about cold lead and iron bracelets? But after all, what was the second mate to him any longer? Yet he had been something to him, and was he going to forget it? Never!
The watch wore away, and still the struggle went on.
“If it only wasn’t for the old woman at home!” thought Jake. “She’s kept a long watch and done a good deal of praying, in hopes to make something of me. And I might have been something if it hadn’t been for—!” and Jake shook his fist towards the mate’s room. “But after all, foul deeds leave a black mark on a man’s soul, and she’d fret her heart out if the hearing of it should come to her. But if every man’s hand is against me, who says it’s my fault if my hand’s against every man? It’s so long since I’ve had a word spoken to me as if I had as much of a soul as the plank under my feet, that I don’t know as I have any to put a stain on; and whose fault is it, I say? And if I don’t keep the men to their word to-night, they’re bound no longer. And what difference does it make? There’s nobody that thinks I’ve got any soul to save.”
Carter’s voice was heard giving orders to haul taut the main-sheet. The tones were quiet and decided, but there was something in them that made the men spring to with a will, and the work was done almost in a minute.
“Belay there, my hearty!” said Carter; and Jake, who had the end, glanced suddenly in his face, and caught a look of kindliness, friendliness, and good cheer, more perhaps than discipline would have allowed, the mate to show if he had thought it would be observed.
The work was done! What chord had he touched? Jake did not know, but he felt a change sweeping through his heart like coming out of an icebelt into tradewinds. A few moments later the bell relieved the watch; Jake plunged below and threw himself into his bunk, his face covered with his hard hands and sobbing like a child.
Carter had been the means of bringing one man to repentance, and saving the life of another—perhaps of half a dozen more.