Drew stirred uneasily. The threats of the crew and the scarcely understood warning of the West Indian steward had to his mind something of the character of a Greek tragic chorus foretelling doom, and presently he moved away out of hearing, not caring to have even negatively any part in the moving finger of Fate.
He wandered about aimlessly for a while, dreading to approach Medbury, who, now that his work was done, stood near the main-rigging with his pipe in his mouth, his spirit for the moment at peace. Drew had little knowledge of sailors, but he was sufficiently a man of the world to know that the irrepressible threats of the forecastle meant little. Still, the steward had hinted at danger, and, yielding to the other's better knowledge of his little world, Drew finally went aft to warn the mate.
Medbury looked up sharply as Drew approached, but turned his eyes away immediately. In the silence that followed neither stirred, but, resting their arms upon the sheer-pole, each seemed absorbed in the cloudless panorama of the closing day.
The sun sank lower and lower; one by one the crew came out of the forecastle, and, dipping up buckets of water, sluiced themselves with the noisy abandon of water-spaniels. The pungent scent of tobacco floated aft, and now the sound of a laugh, or the scuffle of feet upon the deck. From the galley came the soft, slurred speech of the steward, lifted high in a quick exchange of wit with his forecastle neighbors, and followed by the almost continuous flood of his unrestrained cachinnation. Clearly the day was ending in peace.
This peacefulness, so at variance with the scarcely restrained passion that, a moment before, had sent him aft to warn Medbury of danger, left Drew strangely bewildered. He turned to his companion, and with a smile said:
"Do you know, a moment ago I thought that the crew was on the verge of mutiny; now I feel as if I had been dreaming. I don't understand it. They are like care-free children now. I can't believe they are such consummate actors."
Medbury turned to him and grinned.
"What made you think that?" he asked.
"I was at the galley door and heard them making threats. The steward seemed to think there was danger—to you," Drew answered. "I thought I ought to warn you; but now it seems silly."
"A sailorman's threat doesn't mean anything," Medbury told him, "and prophesying evil is the 'doctor's' trade. He's a big voodoo out home in Santa Cruz, and half the negroes on the island will go five miles out of their way to avoid him."