"You—you refuse duty?"
Holy Joe was silent for an instant. All of us were silent. One could have heard a pin drop upon the deck. Then, out of the port foc'sle, a dreadful sound came to our ears, a low, strangled moan. It stabbed the vitals of the most hardened of us; with my own eyes I saw the mate tremble. Aye, in some way Holy Joe had sent a fear into the brute soul of Fitzgibbon; in some way he had sent a fear into the brute souls of us all, and, at least in my case, a great wonder. The pain-filled wail of Nils, coming as it did, seemed magic-inspired to light for me a universal truth. I felt it crudely, saw it dimly, but there it was, dramatized before my eyes, the age-long, ceaseless battle between the Beast in Man and the God in Man, the resistless power of service and sacrifice. Aye, and Holy Joe's softly spoken reply to the mate's words confirmed what I saw and felt.
"You speak of my duty, sir," said he. "I see it—and do it!"
With that he turned on his heel and walked into the foc'sle.
When he had disappeared something seemed to have gone from the air we breathed, something electric and vitalizing. There was an immediate let down of the nervous tension that had gripped us, a common sigh, and a half-hysterical snigger from some fellow behind me. Mister Fitzgibbon seemed to come out of a trance; he shook himself, and stared at Sails and then at Chips. He glared across the deck at us of the starboard watch. He even swore. But there was no life to his curse, and he made no step to follow the defiant stiff into the foc'sle. Instead, he went to the job at hand, and quite obviously sought to regain mastery and self-respect by sulphuric blustering towards the men bent over the ropes. He was a defeated man. He knew it, and we knew it.
A hand fell upon my shoulder. Newman stood behind me.
"A brave act and a brave man," said he. "But they will not let him keep his triumph." After a pause he added, "They dare not."
CHAPTER XIV
I seized Newman's arm and led him aside, intending to impart my news. But eight bells struck, and while they were striking, Mister Lynch's voice summoned the starboard watch to assist in the job the mate had started. We hurried aft with the crowd, and I found chance to say to him no more than,
"Be careful; someone is spying upon you. Boston told me—and I saw him."