"But she won't see me broken up," swore Goodwin to himself as her head vanished in the hood of the companion. "No not if I've got to set the damn ship alight!"
He made the acquaintance, when work was over for the day, of his fellows in ill-fortune, the owners of the three occupied bunks in the forecastle. As if the Etna had laid herself out to starve him of every means of comfort, they proved to be "Dutchmen" that is to say, Teutons of one nationality or another and therefore, by sea-canons, his inferiors, incapable of sharing his feelings and not to be trusted with his purpose. One question, however, they were able to answer satisfactorily. It had occurred to him that since even Tom Mowbray could only get men for the Etna by drugging them, her officers would probably take special precautions to guard against desertion.
"Do they lock us in here at night?" he asked of the three of them when they sat at supper in the port fo'c'sle.
They stared at him uncomprehendingly. For them, helots of the sea, the Etna's terrors were nothing out of the way; all ships used them harshly; life itself was harsh enough. Their bland blond faces were stupid and amiable.
"Log us in!" answered one of them. "No! For what shall they log us in?"
"That's all right, then," said Goodwin and let them continue to stare at him, ruminating his reasons for the question.
There was a fourth "Dutchman" who slumbered through the day in the starboard fo'c'sle and sat all night in the galley, in the exercise of his functions as night-watchman. His lamp shed a path of light from the galley door to the rail when, his fellows in the fo'c'sle being, audibly asleep, Goodwin rose from his bunk and came forth to the deck. Far away, across the level waters of the great bay, the lights of the city made an illumination against the background of the night; overhead there was a sky bold with stars; the Etna floated mute in a rustle of moving waters. There were no ships near her; only now and again a towboat racing up from the Golden Gates went by with the noise of a breaking wave on a steep shore. In the break of the poop there showed the light of Mr. Fant's window, where he lay in his bunk, relaxing his grisly official personality with a book and a cigar.
In deft haste Goodwin stepped to the fore side of the fo'c'sle, where he would be hidden should the watchman take a fancy to look out of his galley. In him a single emotion was constant: he had a need to find Tom Mowbray. It was more than an idea or a passion: it was like the craving of a drug maniac for his poison. The shore that blinked at him across the black waters was not inaccessible under the impulse of that lust of anger; he was at all times a strong swimmer. Under shelter of the deckhouse he stripped his clothes and made of them it was only his shirt and trousers a bundle which the belt that carried his sheath-knife fastened upon his head, descending under his chin like a helmet-strap. With infinite precaution to be unheard he went in this trim across the deck to the rail.
The Etna's chain-plates were broad as a frigate's; he had but to let himself down carefully and he was in the water without a splash. A dozen strokes took him clear of her, and presently he paused, up-ending and treading water, to look back at her. She stood up over her anchors like a piece of architecture, poising like a tower; the sailor in him paid tribute to the builders who had conceived her beauty. They had devised a ship: it needed Mr. Fant and his colleagues to degrade her into a sea-going prophet and give aptness to her by-name of "Hell-packet." He was clear of her now; he might fail to reach the shore and drown, but at least the grey woman aft would never see his humiliation and defeat. He turned over, setting his face to the waterside lights of the city, and struck out.
It was a long swim, and it was fortunate for him that he took the water on the turn of the tide, so that where the tail of the ebb set him down the first of the flood bore him back. The stimulus of the chill and the labor of swimming cleared the poison from his body and brain; he swam steadily, with eyes fixed on the lights beading the waterside and mind clenched on the single purpose to find Tom Mowbray, to deal with him, to satisfy the anger which ached in him like a starved appetite. How he would handle him, what he would do with him, when he found him, did not occupy his thoughts; it was a purpose and not a plan which was taking him ashore. He had the man's pursy large face for ever in his consciousness; the vision of it was a spur, an exasperation; he found himself swimming furiously, wasting strength, in the thought of encountering it.