"Fire—amidships!"
Tedge ran down the after-stairs. Sulphurously he began cursing at the trickle of smoke under the motor frame. It was nothing—a child could have put it out with a bucket of sand. But upon it fell Tedge and the engineer, stamping, shouting, shoving oil-soaked waste upon it, and covertly blocking off the astounded black deckman when he rushed to aid.
"Water, Hogjaw!" roared the master. "She's gainin' on us—she's under the bilge floor now!" He hurled a bucket viciously at his helper. And as they pretended to fight the fire, Crump suddenly began laughing and stood up. The deckman was grinning also. The master watched him narrowly.
"Kick the stuff into the waste under the stairs," he grunted. "Hogjaw, this here boat's goin'—yeh understand? We take the skiff and pull to the shrimp camps, and she hogs down and burns—"
The black man was laughing. Then he stopped curiously. "The cows—"
"Damn the cows! I'll git my money back on 'em! Yeh go lower away on the skiff davits. Yeh don't ask me nothin'—yeh don't know nothin'!"
"Sho', boss! I don't know nothin', or see nothin'!"
He swung out of the smoke already drifting greasily up from the foul waist of the Marie Louise. A little glare of red was beginning to reflect from the mirrored sea. The ripples of the beaching had vanished; obscurely, undramatically as she had lived, the Marie Louise sat on the bar to choke in her own fetid fumes.
Tedge clambered to the upper deck and hurried to his bunk in the wheelhouse. There were papers there he must save—the master's license, the insurance policy, and a few other things. The smell of burning wood and grease was thickening; and suddenly now, through it, he saw the quiet, questioning face of the stranger.
He had forgotten him completely. Tedge's small brain had room but for one idea at a time: first his rage at the lilies, and then the wrecking of the Marie. And this man knew. He had been staring down the after-companionway. He had seen and heard. He had seen the master and crew laughing while the fire mounted.