Under Rocking Skies

by L. Frank Tooker

The captain nodded, and was turning away when Medbury put out a detaining hand.

"How'd you know?" he shouted.

"What?"

"How did you know about it—the row?" Medbury asked again.

"The dominie saw something was wrong, and told me. Got your lantern, too. Good man—seemed to know what to do. Rather surprised me—don't think they've got that sort of horse-sense, as a rule. But no business on deck to-night. Told him so." Then he staggered aft, and took the wheel from the second mate again.

Drew had gone below when the crew went back to the pumps; but he was strangely excited. He knew that he could not sleep, and in a state of mental helplessness he sat for a long time upon the edge of his bunk. Something of the significance of the scene on deck broke in upon him, and he realized that the crew had given up hope. It was not revolt, but a dumb, sheeplike acquiescence in fate. In his heart he was not without a certain sympathy for the men, feeling in the overpowering mastery of the storm something of the vanity of all human endeavor. Yet the mere effort of holding himself in check, aloof from all the tumult of the deck, grew momentarily more and more unbearable, and, rising at last, he went up to the companionway door again.

He saw at once, novice as he was, that in his brief absence the situation had grown worse. There was a constant sweep of sheeted spray across the deck, and he crouched behind the house, as he had done before, both for protection and to avoid being seen by the mate. He resented the thought of being ordered below. He could see the steady rise and fall of the bodies of the men working the pumps, and Medbury standing near them. It had grown lighter, he perceived, though it was still black night.

He was beginning to grow drowsy, and for a moment shifted his position, when suddenly the brig seemed to pause and tremble, then spring to a great height, and the next moment he had the sensation of falling in a dream, and heard Medbury's voice, faint, muffled, like a voice coming from a great distance underground, screaming, "Hold hard! Hold hard!"

In a second of time, in the light of the foam that whitened the sea to leeward, he saw the deck clearly: the men crouching low above the life-lines; Medbury's face turned away, his hands grasping a line about his waist, his body braced; and behind him, rising from his knees, a man with uplifted arm about to strike. The next moment Drew threw himself forward upon the man, and at the same instant was crushed against the booby-hatch by a great weight of water. He was held there till his ears roared and flashes of light snapped before his eyes and his breath was almost gone; then he felt himself lifted and whirled along for what seemed a great distance, with the body of the man he had seized struggling in his grasp. He had at that moment the feeling that his end had come, that he was being borne far from the garden with the fountain, and from that other garden where he saw his mother kneeling with a flower in her hand and her eyes turned up to him smilingly. With these scenes standing out vividly in a dream where all things else were strange unrealities, he was suddenly awakened to life by the crash of his body against something cruelly hard, felt a sharp sting under his arm, pressed it down tight, and fell to the deck alone.

Groping in the darkness, almost breathless, half-blinded by water, he got to his feet and looked about him. He was standing by the lee rail, but the man with whom he had struggled was gone, blotted out. He remembered the sting in his side, and, lifting his hand to the place, struck the haft of a knife that still clung to his coat. Dazed and bewildered, he drew it out, and, holding it gingerly, staggered back to Medbury.