But suddenly, out on deck, a bustle began. Someone shouted. Someone else echoed the shout. It ran all over the ship, and there was a rushing of men to look and then a scampering of feet and the tumbling of men down into the engine room and stokehold. The clang of tools and the rattle of coal. Vast activity everywhere.
McGovern dragged himself to the porthole and looked out. The sea was empty. The sun shone down like molten bronze. What little breeze came from the shore was like the hot blast from a furnace. There was no sign of any vessel anywhere. But the horizon was peculiarly blurred. It was no longer a definite line. It was a vague demarkation between sea and sky, and, as McGovern looked, the water and the sky blended insensibly into one.
“Shamal,” said McGovern drearily. “The wind’s coming. I hope the old tub founders with all on board.”
The whole ship was in a turmoil for long minutes, while the faint haze crept down the coast. Steam began to blow raucously out of the Kingston’s dented funnel, to force a draught. And then there was a clanking of the anchor-chain and a howling of men, and the Kingston’s screw began to revolve and a wild yell ran over the ship.
The old ship gathered steerage-way and headed out to sea, her engines growling protestingly. Above-decks, of course, the navigation would be fairly adequate. Until driven from the pearling grounds, Ras-el-Kasr had sent thirty boats to the fishery, and the wheelman would know currents and depths and courses thoroughly. The Kingston, in fact, would be driven on a basis of one part knowledge and three parts dependence upon Allah.
She was five miles off the coast when the shamal struck. A wild screaming of wind, a dense opacity in the atmosphere, and the Kingston heeled over as under a heavy blow. Immediately after, it seemed, a colossal sea was running and she was making heavy weather of it but being held recklessly on her course.
For an hour, then, McGovern waited grimly in his lurching, looted cabin for the wild yells in the engine room—which was the Arabic idea of discipline—to reach a climax and disclose that something vital had broken. He would be dragged out to fix it. And he would try to get hold of a knife or gun and wipe out the disgrace of having seemed even momentarily to have agreed to the terms of these scum.
At the end of the hour the yelling continued unabated, and the Kingston was still wallowing onward. She pitched. She rolled. She wallowed heavily and groaned as she lurched upright again. And McGovern reflected grimly that before long she would be on one of the pearling banks and would be crashing alongside a pearling-boat to send a horde of yelling men down upon her.