“You, Schultz?” exclaimed the captain, turning around to the old quartermaster who was just going off his trick of duty at the wheel. “Why, man, you’d be taking your life in your hands.”
“I’ve been up der masts of sheeps off der Horn on vorse nights dan dees,” was the calm reply. “Ledt me go, sir.”
“You go at your own responsibility, then,” was the reply. “I ought not to let you up at all, and yet that boy—go ahead, then.”
The old German quartermaster saluted and was gone.
From the bridge they saw him for a moment, in the gleam of light from a porthole, crossing the wet deck.
He clambered into the shrouds and then began climbing upward along the perilous path Jack had already traveled.
“Pray Heaven we have not two deaths to our account to-night, Metcalf,” said the captain earnestly to his first officer.
“Amen to that, sir,” was the reply.
And then there was nothing but the shriek of the wind and the beat of the waves, while the two officers gazed piercingly upward into the darkness where they knew not what tragedies might be taking place.