I was bitterly vexed. Postponement might mean frustration. My scheme was ready for instant execution; my heart was hot as a madman’s to have at the project and accomplish it; and now I might be obliged to wait a month and perhaps as long again as a month! For here was just the sort of wind to blow us half-way back the distance we had already measured; and I could do nothing until the brig was off Amsterdam Island, the weather quiet, the main topsail to the mast, and Bol and the longboat ashore.
There was nothing, however, to be done beyond heaving the brig to under a rag of main staysail, and letting her lie with no more way than she would get from the hurl of the seas and the gale up aloft.
And yet, in one sense, this foul weather was as fortunate a thing as could have happened; I’ll tell you why. I had taken care to persuade Yan Bol that I had turned over the crew’s scheme of burying the money, had thought better of it, was, indeed, now thinking well of it as, on the whole, the easiest way to secure the treasure for a method of distribution to be afterward considered; but I had never flattered myself that he believed me fully sincere. In fact, I had shown too much amazement at the start, reasoned against the imbecile project too vehemently afterward. But now, when this change of weather came, my disappointment was so great, my mortification so keen, that even Yan Bol, with his slow eyes, and heavy, dull, ruminant intellect could not look me in the face and mistake.
We stood together while the men rolled the canvas up, their hoarse cries, as they triced up the bunts, going down the gale like the yells of gulls. The rain swept us in horizontal lines; the water smoked the length of the brig as though her metal sheathing were red hot; the Dutchman’s cap of fur clung to his big head like a huge, over-ripe fig. The mist of the sudden gale boiled round the sea line, and we labored in the commotion of our horizon, whose semi-diameter could have been measured by a twenty-four pounder.
“Holy Sacrament!” roared Yan Bol in Dutch. “Dis vhas der vindt to make anchells of men!” and he shook his immense fist at the windward ocean, and thundered out, “Nimin dich der Teufel, as der Schermans say!”
“Han’t I had enough of this?” I shouted, sweeping my hand round the dirty, freckled green of the seas, which were beginning to heap themselves with true oceanic weight out of the granite shadow of the wet. “I’d had months of it when I was picked up off the oar, and I’ve had months of it since, and months of it remain.” And I bawled to him that we wanted no more hindrances from the weather, that it was time the dollars were buried, that it was time, indeed, we were thrashing the brig to that part of the Australian coast where we should agree to wreck her. “I want my money,” I cried. “I want to settle down ashore.”
“Vhere vhas ve bound to now?”
“Dead west and all the way back again.”
“Vy zyn al verdom’d! Vere vhas der island?”
“Somewhere close. The brig must be kept thus while it blows on end. I may have overshot the mark, and the island may be leeward of us now—so keep your weather eye lifting.”