Under Rocking Skies

by L. Frank Tooker

Silently he stepped aside, and she went quickly to her room, closing the door behind her and not looking back.

He could not summon to his mind a single thread of proof; yet, as he turned away, he knew that unconsciously she had given him her answer. The closing door between them, he told himself, was the symbol.

He was paler when he went up the companionway again, and his lips were firmly closed; but there was no harshness in their lines, and he carried his head high: clearly he would bear whatever life brought to him.

A moment later, as he stepped into the blinding darkness of the deck, a wave broke near, and a sheet of water, clipped from the toppling crest by the wind, swept across the house and struck him like a lash. Staggered for an instant, with his hand slipping from the sliding-hood, he dropped behind the house.

He was still kneeling on the deck, brushing the water from his eyes, when he felt rather than heard or saw some one go by. He would be sent below, he knew, if seen by the captain or the mate; and he smiled as he thought of his position, feeling like a schoolboy in mischief and in danger of detection. Slowly he turned, and, without rising, watched the passing figure.

It was six bells, and Medbury had come forward to change the crew at the pumps. As he stepped past the house and made his way to the life-lines, he lifted his eyes and stopped short. The pumps were deserted. Then he rushed forward and peered down upon the main-deck; only the sloppy space showed itself, unrelieved by a human figure. One of the down-hauls of the whiz-jig, whipping in the gale, snapped across his face, and was flung irritably aside.

In the first rush of his dismay the thought came to him that all were lost; but the possibility of four men being swept away without warning was too much to believe, and across his mind there flashed the certainty that the crew had refused longer to work the pumps. That they had been losing heart had been borne in upon him increasingly, and now that he stood face to face with the desperate situation he felt his face grow hot with the fury that seized him and bore him out of himself. Some instinct told him that they had taken refuge down the booby-hatchway, and he sprang to the sliding-hood, thrust it back, and peered in. It was black and still, but the intangible something that betrays the presence of human creatures seemed to pervade the place, and he knew that his quarry was there. His voice choked with fury as he yelled:

"You damn' curs—you—you—want to ruin us all! Out of this—quick, or I shoot you down like rats in a hole!"

No sound came out of the black interior, and with a snarl of rage he tore open the door, splintering the peg in the hasp, thrust one foot over the sill to descend, and struck the back of a man. The next instant he had the man by the collar, lifted him struggling to the deck, and with a mighty swing sent him forward into the life-lines, where he hung for a second, and then fell lightly, like a sprawling cat, to the main-deck. With a snarl, Medbury swung himself into the opening, and dropped between decks. Three men had been sitting on the steps below the man he had thrown out, and he swept them off like leaves from a wand, and he heard their smothered groans as he crushed them together in a heap on the floor. He was in his own province now, for the storeroom was his care, and he could have found a sail-needle there in the dark; and as he freed himself from the sprawling bodies under him, he swung about him, reaching out, with itching hands, for his cowed and dispirited crew.

He felt an arm encircle his legs, and kicked back viciously, feeling rather than hearing his heel crunch against a face. The arm about his legs dropped limp, and he felt another pawing along his shoulders and reaching for his throat. With a quick thrust he found a bristly face, and, striking straight with his free arm, sent the man tumbling to the floor. He heard the sound of feet stumbling up the stairs, and thought the fight was won, and so moved back, only to find shoulders and legs clasped by other men. He clasped back, and the next moment was staggering about the place in a hand-to-hand struggle. He kicked himself free again, and with a quick thrust forward threw himself to the floor, an opponent under him. He heard the sailor's head strike hard, felt his hold relax, and rose, panting, to his knees as a lantern swung in at the door, and Captain March's voice, cool and incisive, called, "Stop right there!" Looking up, Medbury saw the light of the lantern shining along the barrel of a pistol, and the captain's impassive face above it.