“I was just askin' about the course, Mr. McGlory. It didn't quite seem to me—”
“Go up forward!”
Pink hesitated, then he raised his voice. “Cap'n Smiley generally likes me to wake him when he's slept as long's this.”
“Go up forward.”
“Well—”
He was starting, but he moved too slowly. McGlory's temper gave way, and he struck him, with the back of his hand, across the face.
“You hit me!” The blood rushed into Harper's face; he drew himself up, his fists contracting, the muscles of his bare forearms knotting. Ole gazed impassively at the compass, but his fingers were twitching on the spokes of the wheel; he saw from the expression of Harper's eyes that the boy needed no assistance. For one tense moment, as they stood there on the sloping deck, a faint light shining on them from the open companionway, anything seemed possible. Had Mc-Glory been a coward he would have retreated from the blazing figure before him; but he was not a coward. Instead of retreating, he stepped forward, gripped Harper's arm, and whirled him around. “Go up forward!” he said for the fourth time. And Pink, swallowing hard, went.
A gentle sigh escaped the wheelsman. The mate turned on him; but Ole was gazing out into the dark with an expressionless face. Into the silence that followed came a gurgling snore from the cabin; if Pink had hoped to wake the captain, he had failed. And the end of this brief incident was that McGlory returned below and finished his supper, while the Merry Anne continued to point nor'east.
Towards eleven o'clock the moon rose and showed Duck Island six miles off the port bow. McGlory was again at the wheel. He now brought her up still closer to the wind, heading a few points off Outer Duck Island and skimming the lower edge of Jennie Graham Shoal. Huddled up in the bow, out of the mate's view, Harper and Larsen were watching out ahead, pulling at their pipes and occasionally exchanging a whispered word or two. Linding, the third sailor, lay flat on the deck by the windlass, his head pillowed on a coil of rope, the regular sound of his breathing telling that he was asleep. Soon Ole's practised eyes made out a bit of land far off to port, and he pointed it out to his companion.
“What is it?”