"I'll have you hung, you dogs, all of you!" he shrieked, while the three women stood on the companion-ladder, white and trembling with fear.
It was with great trouble that we got him below, and when he was there I shut him in his berth, and sent the two stewards in with him to see that he neither did himself harm nor got free, and then I turned my attention to saving the ship and our lives.
We were in an awfully critical situation, and one which, in ordinary circumstances, might have made a man's heart quail; but now—with the woman I loved on board—it was maddening to think of, and made me curse my brother who had brought us into it. Think of what it was. Not five miles on our lee-bow there was the land, and we could even distinguish as we lifted on the sea the cruel line of white breakers which seemed to run nearly abeam, for the Vancouver was not a very weatherly ship, and the gale, instead of breaking, increased, until, if I had dared, I would have ordered sail to be shortened.
I went to the chart again. Just as I took it, Mackenzie called to me, "Mr. Ticehurst, there's a big flat-topped mountain some way inland. I think it must be Table Mountain." Yes, he knew the coast, and even as I looked at the chart, I heard him order the helm to be put up. I saw why, for when we had hauled into the wind, we were heading dead for the great four-fathom bank that lies off Bonita Point. But there was a channel between it and the land.
I ran on deck and spoke to Mackenzie. He pointed out on the starboard hand, and there the water was breaking on the bank. We were running for the narrow channel under a considerable press of canvas, seeing how it blew; for all Mac relieved her of when we first put her into the wind was the main top-gallant sail. And now I could do nothing for a moment but try to get sight of our landmarks, and keep sight of them, for the weather was still thick.
Fortunately, as it might have seemed for us, the chain-cables had already been ranged fore and aft on the deck, and I told Mackenzie to see them bent on to the anchors, and the stoppers made ready. Yet I knew that if we had to anchor, we were lost; in such a gale it could only postpone our fate, for they would come home or part to a dead certainty.
Mackenzie and I stood together on the poop watching anxiously for the right moment to haul our wind again.
"What do you think of it, Mr. Mackenzie?" I said, as I clung on to a weather backstay. "Where do you think we shall be in half an hour?"
"I don't think I shall ever see Whitechapel again, sir," he answered quietly, and I knew he was thinking of home, of his wife and his daughter. "She will go to leeward like a butter-cask in this sea; and now look at the land!" And he pointed toward the line of breakers on the land, which came nearer and nearer. We waited yet a few minutes, and then I looked at Mackenzie inquiringly. "Yes, I think so, sir," he said, and with my hand I motioned the men at the wheel to put the helm down again. As she came into the wind the upper foretopsail blew out of the boltropes, while the vessel struggled like a beaten hound that is being dragged to execution, and shivered from stem to stern. For the waves were running what landsmen call mountains high; she now shipped a sea every moment, which came in a flood over the fo'c'sle head; and pouring down through the scuttle, the cover of which had been washed overboard, it sent the men's chests adrift in the fo'c'sle and washed the blankets out of the lower bunks. And to windward the roar of the breakers on the bank was deafening. I went below just for a moment. I knew I had no right to go there, my place was on deck, but could not help myself. I must see Elsie once more before we died, for if the vessel struck, the first sea that washed over her might take me with it, and we should never see each other again on earth. But the two sisters were not in the saloon. I stepped toward their berth, and Helen met me, rising up from the deck, where she had been crouching down in terror.
I have said she was beautiful; and so she was when she smiled, and the pleasant light fell about her like sunlight on some strange and rare tropical flower, showing her rosy complexion, her delicate skin of full-blooded olive, and her coils of dark and shining hair But I never saw her so beautiful as she was then, clothed strangely with the fear of death, white with passion that might have made a weaker woman crimson with shame, and fiercely triumphant with a bitter self-conquest. She caught me by the arm. "Tom, dear Tom," she said, in a wonderful voice that came to me clearly through the howl of the wind, "I know there is not hope for us. He" (and she pointed toward her husband's cabin) "has ruined us! I hate him! And, Tom, now it is all over, and we shall not live! Say good-by to me, say good-by!"