"No," he answered; "you couldn't do much, short-handed as you are. Maybe we'd just lose control of her. But you go forward and call to Mr. Medbury to keep a-going—keep a-going."
It was a quarter of an hour before the derelict's stern was clearly past the brig's. Slowly the house crept past—a high house, Captain March could now see plainly, and painted white. "Some foreigner," he thought with scorn, "scared to his boats before he was hurt." He felt all the contempt of his race and kind for timid unseafaring peoples.
Once when the wreck sank deeply in the hollow of the sea, and the swell broke over her, she came up sputtering, and Captain March heard the water gushing from some opening with the rhythmic chug-chug of water gurgling from a bottle.
"That's what we heard," he said aloud. It sounded uncanny even now. "I guess it's a water-butt that's shifted over on its side and the sea washes full," he thought. "Well, it's creepy enough."
Suddenly he gave a start, for from the wreck came the faint, unmistakable crying of a cat. He walked to the rail and listened, muttering to himself: "The scoundrels, to leave her behind!" He stood by the rail for a moment, and presently called: "Kitty! kitty! poor kitty!" Then he went back to the wheel again, whistling loudly for a wind, that he might not hear the plaintive response to his call.
For a time the situation had worn for Hetty a certain pleasurable aspect of romance; but in the dragging moments that followed the sending away of the boat, her nerves grew tense under the strain, and seemed to present, as it were, sharp edges to the irritating suspense. The low-riding wreck, awash at one moment, at the next looming threateningly above them, showing its jagged outlines uncertainly through the enlarging fog, took on an aspect wholly sinister. With only the desire to get beyond sight of it, she crossed to the starboard main-rigging, and gazed steadily out across the vaporous expanse of the windless sea.
Her resolute refusal to watch the derelict took on, in her mind, something of the character of a senseless game with her fear: she told herself that she would count two hundred before she looked to see if it were farther away, then five hundred; after that she resolved not to look until she heard a footstep or a voice. The latter task, unrelieved by the mechanically mental exertion of the whispered numbers, became speedily unbearable, and she began to count again. Presently a step sounded on the deck near her. In the tension of the moment she looked up, dangerously near to hysteria.
It was, of course, Drew, the only idle man aboard.
"We have passed it," he said gaily.
Her hand was resting against the rigging, and now, as he spoke, in a revulsion of feeling she laid her forehead against it and laughed.