“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Two watches on a single yardarm and unable to put a reef in a handkerchief like that!” he snorted. “What’ll it be if we’re off here a month?”
“A month!” I cried.
“A month isn’t anything for Cape Stiff,” he said grimly. “I’ve been off here seven weeks and then turned tail and run around the other way.”
“Around the world?” I gasped.
“It was the only way to get to ’Frisco,” he answered. “The Horn’s the Horn, and there’s no summer seas that I’ve ever noticed in this neighbourhood.”
My fingers were numb and I was chilled through when I took a last look at the wretched men on the fore-yard and went below to warm up.
A little later, as I went in to table, through a cabin port I stole a look for’ard between seas and saw the men still struggling on the freezing yard.
The four of us were at table, and it was very comfortable, in spite of the Elsinore’s violent antics. The room was warm. The storm-racks on the table kept each dish in its place. The steward served and moved about with ease and apparent unconcern, although I noticed an occasional anxious gleam in his eyes when he poised some dish at a moment when the ship pitched and flung with unusual wildness.
And now and again I thought of the poor devils on the yard. Well, they belonged there by right, just as we belonged here by right in this oasis of the cabin. I looked at Mr. Pike and wagered to myself that half-a-dozen like him could master that stubborn foresail. As for the Samurai, I was convinced that alone, not moving from his seat, by a tranquil exertion of will, he could accomplish the same thing.