And mademoiselle was glad the captain was to remain on board the ship. For they had been so short-handed. Anthony and two men were not enough to handle that great vessel, for all her meager spread of sail; and the ship must get home safely. She must! for she carried the means of slackening the law's processes and easing many hatreds. The captain smiled when she said this. Anthony would have managed very well; there were few that would have ventured, as he had ventured, into that lonely sea, so feared and cursed by sailors, and whose place in the world's waters was so vague that no two charts gave it the same position. Oh, yes; Anthony was a man to carry a thing through when once he had begun it; and the captain's eyes were very cold and very steady, indeed, as they fastened upon the young man on the forward deck, adding his weight to a seaman's, hauling away on a line. And mademoiselle found herself looking at those eyes, so like hard, green agates; and she felt something like fear creep upon her.
They had breakfast. During its course, Tom Horn said never a word; indeed, he had not spoken since Weir had come into the ship; he ate and stared and listened, and sometimes he sat quite still, his eyes on the captain, and a queer down-drawn twitch to his lip. Weir gave them what news he had of the port; and Anthony laid out the ship's papers for him to see.
"Excellent traffic!" said the captain, over the items of cargo. He sipped his small glass of brandy. "Oh, excellent! Your uncle knew the East; he seemed to feel the levels where the rich things lay. It was a kind of genius with him. Here we have a shipful of value such as no other merchant could have collected." He finished the brandy. "And all in good condition, you say?"
Anthony had the hatches off after breakfast; and Captain Weir saw the merchandise for himself. He came out of the hold and dusted his fingers and clothes with a kerchief.
"It could not be snugger nor better," he said. He looked at mademoiselle. "Yes, we must get her safe, supercargo; no chance must take her from us now."
The wind kept brisk for days, and it blew the three vessels before it; then it shifted and came out of the northeast with a shrill cut, a whipping of the water, and a racing of clouds. The schooner and brig stripped close to keep in the crippled ship's company; and Anthony, with Weir's help, added more braces to the makeshift mast. One morning, at dawn, after a blowy night, and with the Barbados somewhere ahead, they saw the brig tossing away to the south and the schooner nowhere visible. All that day the gale lashed and raved and drove into the southwest; the sky was like lead and seemed to touch the wild waters. In the first dog-watch the ship, slow to mind her helm, was struck by a great sea; the man at the wheel was washed overboard, and Captain Weir was dashed against one of the boats and carried below with a broken leg. And so Anthony was left to work the ship with one man, for Tom Horn had little power in his body and no sea-going skill in his hands. For three days and nights the young man slept only while mademoiselle held the wheel at quiet spaces in the storm; he kept sail to the vessel, and ran her, upright, before the shock of the wind. Then the storm died down, and the sea raced itself out; and Captain Weir, stretched on his bed, gray with pain but with steadfast eyes, said:
"Is the brig still in sight?"
Anthony bowed, and, grim and tired, stood in the cabin doorway.
"She's hung to us like a limpet," he answered. "I've said a deal against Tarrant and Blake, and I feel I'll say more. But they can manage a ship, and they keep to their purpose; and I trust God Almighty will hold those things to their credit when they finally stand before Him, stripped and sorry and ashamed."
Captain Weir eased his hurt leg, held tight between bits of scantling.