“Passengers go below!”
Mayo looked aft and saw Alma Marston clinging to the spike-rack of the spanker mast. The coach-house lantern shone upon her white face.
“Go below!” repeated the master.
She shook her head.
“This is no place for a woman.”
“The vessel is going to sink!” she quavered.
“The schooner is all right. You go below!”
How bitter her fear was Mayo could not determine. But even at his distance he could see stubborn resolution on her countenance.
“If I've got to die, I'll not die down there in a box,” she cried. “I'm going to stay right here.”
Captain Downs swore and turned his back on her. Apparently he did not care to come to a real clinch with this feminine mutineer.
The great spar crashed out to the extent of its arc, and the sail volleyed with it, ballooning under the weight of the wind. The reef-points were no longer within Mayo's reach. He ran along the boom, arms outspread to steady himself, and was half-way to its end before the telltale surge under him gave warning. Then he fell upon the huge stick, rolled under it, and shoved arms and legs under the foot of the sail. Barely had he clutched the spar in fierce embrace before it began its return journey. It was a dizzy sweep across the deck, a breath-taking plunge.
When the spar collided with the stays he felt as if arms and legs would be wrenched from his body. He did not venture to move or to relax his hold. He clung with all his strength, and nerved himself for the return journey. He had watched carefully, and knew something of the vagaries of the giant flail. When it was flung to port the wind helped to hold it there until the resistless surge of the schooner sent it flying wild once more. He knew that no mere flesh and blood could endure many of those collisions with the stays. He resolved to act on the next oscillation to port, in order that his strength might not be gone.
“See that the cable runs free!” he screamed as he felt the stick lift for its swoop.
He swung himself upward over the spar the moment it struck, and the momentum helped him. He ran again, steadying himself like a tight-wire acrobat. He snatched the noose from his shoulders, slipped it over the end of the boom, and yelled an order, with all the strength of his lungs:
“Pull her taut!”
At that instant the boom started to swing again.
Standing on the end of the spar, he was outboard; the frothing sea was under him. He could not jump then; to leap when the boom was sweeping across the deck meant a skinful of broken bones; to wait till the boom brought up against the stays, so he realized, would invite certain disaster; he would either be crushed between the boom and shrouds or snapped far out into the ocean as a bean 'is filliped by a thumb. On the extreme end of the spar the leverage would be so great that he could not hope to cling there with arms and legs.
A queer flick of thought brought to Mayo the phrase, “Between the devil and the deep sea.” That flying boom was certainly the devil, and the foaming sea looked mighty deep.
Her weather roll was more sluggish and Mayo had a moment to look about for some mode of escape.
He saw the sail of “number four” mast sprawling loose in its lazy-jacks, unfurled and showing a tumbled expanse of canvas. When he was inside the rail, and while the boom was gathering momentum, he took his life in his hands and his grit between his teeth and leaped toward the sail. He made the jump just at the moment when the boom would give him the most help.
He heard Captain Downs's astonished oath when he dove over that worthy mariner's head, a human comet in a twenty-foot parabola.
He landed in the sail on his hands and knees, yelling, even as he alighted: “Catch her, boys!”
They did it when the spar banged against the stays. They surged on the rope, tightened the noose, and before the vessel rolled again had made half a dozen turns of the free end of the cable around the nearest cleats.
Mayo scrambled down from the sail and helped them complete the work of securing the spar. He passed near Captain Downs when the job had been finished.
“Well,” growled the master of the _Alden_, “what do you expect me to say to that?”
“I simply ask you to keep from saying something.”
“What?”
“That a steamboat man can't earn his pay aboard a wind-jammer, sir. I don't like to feel that I am under obligations in any way.”
The master grunted.
“And if the little thing I have done helps to square that break I made by licking your passenger I'll be glad of it,” added Mayo.
“You needn't rub it in,” said Captain Downs, carefully noting that there was nobody within hearing distance. “When a man has been in a nightmare for twenty-four hours, like I've been, you've got to make some allowances, Captain Mayo. This is a terrible mixed-upmess.” He squinted at the mizzen rigging where the lanterns revealed the damage. “And by the way those backstays are ripped out, and seeing how that mast is wabbling, this schooner is liable to be about as badly mixed up as the people are on board of her.”
Mayo turned away and went back to his work. They were rigging extra stays for the mizzenmast. And he noted that the girl near the coach-house door was staring at him with a great deal of interest. But in that gloom he was only a moving figure among toiling men.
An hour later the mate ordered the oil-bags to be tied to the catheads. The bags were huge gunny sacks stuffed with cotton waste which was saturated with oil.
In spite of the fact that her spanker, double-reefed, was set in order to hold her up to the wind, weather-vane fashion, the schooner seemed determined to keep her broadside to the tumbling seas. The oil slick helped only a little; every few moments a wave with spoondrift flying from it would smash across the deck, volleying tons of water between rails, with a sound like thunder. At these times the swirling torrent in the waist would reach to a man's knees.
Mayo did not take his watch below. The excitement of his recent experience had driven away all desire for sleep, and the sheathing in the fo'c'sle was squawking with such infernal din that only a deaf man could have remained there in comfort.
However, he was not uneasy in regard to the safety of the schooner. In a winter gale, with ice caking on her, he would have viewed their situation in different light. But he had frequently seen the seas breaking over the wallowing coal-luggers when he had passed them at anchor on the coast.
He made a trip of his own along the main-deck, scrambling upon the spars to avoid the occasional deluge which swept her amidship. The battened hatches were apparently withstanding the onslaughts of the waves. He could feel less weight in the wind. It was apparent that the crisis of the blow had passed. The waves were not so savage; their crests were not breaking. But just then the second mate rushed past, and Mayo overheard the report he gave the captain, who was pacing the lee alley:
“The mizzenmast is getting more play, sir. I'm afraid it's raising the devil with the step and ke'lson.”
“Rig extra stays and try her again for water,” ordered the master.
Mayo, returning to the mizzen, found the entire crew grouped there. The mast was writhing and groaning in its deck collar, twisting its coat--the canvas covering at its foot where it entered the deck.
The dusky faces were exhibiting much concern. They had flocked where the ship was dealing herself a wound; the sailor sixth sense of impending trouble had drawn them there.
“Four of you hustle aloft and stand ready to make fast those stays!” commanded the first mate.
“Rest of you make ready tackle!” shouted the second mate, following close on Mayo's heels.
The negroes did not stir. They mumbled among themselves.
“Step lively!” insisted the mate.
“'Scuse us, but dat mast done goin' to tumble down,” ventured a man.
“Aloft with you, I say!”
Just then the schooner slatted herself on a great roller, and the starboard stays snapped, one after the other, like mammoth fiddle-strings. The mast reeled and there was an ominous sound below the deck.
“She done put a hole into herself!” squealed a sailor.
In the gloom their eyes were gleaming with the fires one beholds in the eyes of frightened cats.
“Dere she comes!” shouted one of them. He pointed trembling finger.
Over the coamings of the fore-hatch black water was bubbling.
Yelping like animals, the sailors stampeded aft in a bunch, bowling over Mayo and the mates in their rush.
“Stop 'em, captain!” bellowed the first mate, guessing their intent. He rose and ran after them. But fright gave them wings for their heels. They scampered over the roof of the after-house, and were on the quarter-deck before the skipper was out of the alley. They leaped into the yawl which was swung at the stern davits.
“You renegades!” roared the master. “Come out of that boat!”
With the two mates at his heels he rushed at them. They grabbed three struggling men by the legs and dragged them back. But the negroes wriggled loose, driven to frantic efforts by their panic. They threw themselves into the boat again.
“Be men!” clamored Mayo, joining the forces of discipline. “There's a woman aboard here!”