Pleased as could be, the skipper sprang from his bunk and began putting on his foul-weather clothing. He strode briskly from his cabin. About to make topside, he paused at the mate’s door. He swung it open and leaned in.
“Briggs, I think you’d better unlock those boys.”
The mate gawked as though he couldn’t believe his ears, but Captain West held up a thick, hairy paw when he opened his mouth to protest.
“Do as I say! They’re not going anywhere, especially in this storm. It’s one thing to keep them locked up like that under the pretext of facing charges, Briggs. But it’s another to have them trapped below decks during a storm.”
The mate nodded obediently, and Captain West wheeled and headed for the ladder. Moving along the passageway, he was surprised to find that he had to stretch out flat against the bulkhead to keep from falling. The James Kennedy was bucking that much!
Clambering up the ladder, he needed all his strength to keep from being thrown below. When he got on deck, the wind seemed to whistle through his ears, and he pursed his lips in a whistle of his own when he observed the huge, rising seas and the dirty clouds scudding low and threatening above him.
Glancing over the side, Captain West whistled again.
There was a good two feet less of freeboard already, and the James Kennedy seemed to be plunging deeper into the steely, rain-dimpled waves. Captain West pulled his cap lower on his forehead and thrust one powerful shoulder ahead of him as he bucked into the screaming wind. The rain came slanting at him in sheets and raked his face. He ducked his chin deeper into his shoulder, not quite so jubilant a skipper as he had been upon awakening.
For this, indeed, was the start of a real blow!
Below decks, Sandy Steele and Jerry James were awake, too. They had been so for perhaps a half hour before Captain West, roused from a deep sleep by the unfamiliar pitching of the vessel. Now they sat on the lower bunk. Both boys had deeply serious expressions on their faces. Sandy was not even aware of the cowlick that hung forward on his forehead, and Jerry James’s brow was a mass of wrinkles. They were listening to the steady clanking and groaning of the James Kennedy’s steel fibers as the laden ore boat rolled in the rising seas. Even below, they could hear the thin wailing of the winds above.