"I may be a little liar," said the bos'n, "but this is the first I've heered about it. Now wake up properly."
The bos'n had brought Bill hard-tack and water for breakfast, together with a hunk of cold meat pie pinched from the cabin pantry. He unlocked the handcuffs, and put the food on the small paint-shelf. "When youse put that inside your belt," said he, "Old Home-sweet-home says you kin make yourself scarce, and join your watch, my son, the watch below."
VII
The old man nagged like an old woman and Mr. Dodd looked haggard, haunted, grew irritable, and hounded the men at their work. As to the second mate, he seemed demoralized altogether. Nor was there comfort in the forecastle, where the straining bowsprit worked a passage for the water until all bunks were sodden and men wrung out wet clothes to put on damp ones after their watch on deck. The presence of a sneak made talk unsafe, and there was sullen silence in that wet, black, freezing hole, while the Cape Horn swell struck like a battering-ram and freezing sprays lashed high. Then somehow Captain Home took exception to a glance or a word from Auld Jock, flew in a passion, had the man spread-eagled, and gave him three dozen to show him who was master.
"Rope's end" could not be mentioned after that, or "rope," a word but seldom used afloat. It was barred lest that or ever so slight a reference remind Auld Jock of the outrage. Delicately tactful, afraid to take over his duties lest they affront his pride, the fellows would leave to him the bit of meat which had a trace of fat, offer all sorts of little courtesies, seek Jock's advice in their affairs, ask his opinion when a point was argued. Silas was once more a member of the mess, apparently quite friends again with Bill, for in this general mourning all men were brothers. But on duty there were no chanteys sung. The job which had taken five minutes was now dragged out for an hour; a surly obedience, a scowling glance, replaced the old alacrity of service, and Captain Home had remarkably narrow escapes from blocks or marlinespikes which fell from aloft by accident.
Then at long last, driven far down towards the Antarctic after six weeks of awful cold, of furious gales, of peril without and smoldering mutiny within, the ship won round the Horn. Sheeted with ice from truck to keelson, she drove before a polar gale straight to the norrard. A storm jib, and a close-reefed to'gallant sail kept her just clear of being jumped by black-browed, white-manned, hell-bred, mast-high combers, outroaring the Antarctic wind, while sheeted spray slashed overhead, and on the rolling decks green seas came aft, waist deep.
Jock and the Iroquois, the two strongest men in the watch, were at the wheel, the mate standing by lest a kick of the rudder whirl them into the scuppers. Forward the rest of the men hung on, half drowned, Silas and Bill together in the starboard shrouds. "Say," the American had to shout to make himself heard in that uproar, "jest you keep an eye on the old man, aft there in the rigging. He knows he daren't heave to, and if we broach we'll founder; but if he's man enough he'll set three reefs in the tawps'l and let her rip for Hail Columbia."
By the fading daylight Bill saw the gleam in this Yankee's eyes, the smile upon his lips, the triumph of him, caught the exultant laugh, and for the first time knew that here was indeed a man. But as it needs a light to cast a shadow, this new admiration for the Yankee sharpened Bill's memory of the betrayal, so mean an act of spite. If the ship won through to the Columbia, Silas had prospects ahead a life to live. If she broached to, if one of these vindictive monster seas should batter in her ribs, and send her reeling down through the black deeps beneath, he need not go to Newgate, or be hanged at Tyburn on a false charge of murdering his mother. As he looked at Silas the lad's lips appeared to be drawn, gray, smoldering, while in his eyes the American saw grief so awful that he turned away. He was afraid.
To fear is only human, but the display of it is cowardice, that meanest selfishness which infects and saps and drains away the courage of others just when they need their strength. So Silas, knowing at the inner-most of his being that he was afraid of Bill, in spirit terrified, must needs, for his manhood's sake, attempt to bluff.
"Shucks! You got a grouch ag'in me still?" he challenged.