During the next few days she avoided the Captain in every possible way. Not that he ever attempted to seek her out, for, since that memorable interview he seemed to have forgotten her existence as completely as though she had ceased to be. He had again become the grim, taciturn, and mysterious individual she had first encountered. Yet, despite the girl's avoidance of him, there was gradually developing in her mind a desire to do something which would exalt her in his eyes. She wanted to bridge that vague gulf between them; to achieve something which would prove her worth. It was a delightfully ingenuous dream, only possible to a girl as unsophisticated and natural as this young Amazon of the Seas.
In due time and through no effort of her own, the hoped-for opportunity did occur and the girl was able to play the part she had so often pictured in her waking dreams. It came about, as such things usually do, in quite a fortuitous manner.
One day, about a week after her interview with Calamity, the weather, which had been remarkably fine since they left the island, showed signs of a change and before mid-day the sun had disappeared behind a curtain of sombre-tinted clouds. A wind sprang up and freshened as the day wore on, the sea became choppy, and a great bank of black clouds spread over the sky till there was barely sufficient light by which to read the compass on the bridge. Soon the Hawk was rolling and pitching in a nasty fashion and shipping seas over her weather-bow every time she ducked her nose. In view of the approaching storm, hand-lines were rigged across the decks, the prisoner in the wheel-house was transferred to the hold, and a couple of men stationed at the hand steering-gear in case the steam-gear should break down at a critical moment.
Swiftly and with ever-increasing violence the hurricane swept down upon them. The seas, a turbid green, with great, foaming crests, had increased in fury and every moment grew higher, while the valleys between them, streaked and mottled with patches of foam, became deeper and more engulfing. In the midst of the mêlée of raging waters, the Hawk lurched and rolled and pitched, curveted and plunged as though she were on gimbals. Blacker and blacker grew the sky, higher and higher leapt the waves. Now they rose in front of the straining ship in solid walls of inky water, to plunge down upon the forecastle with a roar like thunder and a force which made her reel and stagger. Then a great wave would leap high above the weather-bow, and, rushing past her listing beam, descend with a mighty crash upon the starboard quarter, filling the wheel-house waist-deep with seething water.
Night came on, scarce darker than the afternoon which had preceded it, and with never a friendly star nor a rift in the solid blackness. Above the wild, devouring waste of tumbling seas the mast-head light tossed and circled—a dim, luminous speck in the fathomless darkness. The wind howled and shrieked and moaned like a chorus of lost souls in torment.
Throughout that seemingly endless night Calamity and Smith kept the bridge together, drenched and cold despite their oilskins; their faces whipped by the stinging wind, their eyes sore with the salt spray that was flung in ghostly eddies against them. Two bells struck—four—six—eight; the two relief quartermasters fought their way along the sea-swept for'ad deck and took over the wheel from the worn-out men who clutched it. Two—four—six—eight bells over again; another four hours had passed, and another two quartermasters had come upon the bridge to take their "trick" and release the exhausted men at the wheel.
Soon after this—it was four o'clock in the morning—Calamity staggered up the inclined deck to the spot where Smith was standing.
"You'd better get below," he yelled above the roar of the gale. "You've been up here over twelve hours."
"I'm all right, sir," answered the second-mate, as he clung to the bridge-rail.
"Never mind, get to your bunk."