Part 107

“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!”

But the plea which might have affected an Anglo-Saxon did not prevail. Their knives were out--not for attack on their superiors, but to slash away the davit tackle.

“Come on, boys! Throw 'em out!” shouted the master, leading the way into the yawl over the rail.

His two mates and Mayo followed, and the engineer, freshly arrived from forward, leaped after them. But as fast as they tossed a man upon the quarter-deck he was up and in the boat again fighting for a place.

“Throw 'em overboard!” roared the master, venting a terrible oath. He knocked one of the maddened wretches into the sea. The next moment the captain was flat on his back, and the sailors were trampling on him.

Most of the surges came riding rail-high; sometimes an especially violent wave washed the deck aft.

Following it, a chasm regularly opened under the vessel's counter, a swirling pit in the ocean twenty feet deep.

There was good fortune as well as misfortune in the affair of the yawl. When at last it dropped it avoided the period of the chasm.

In spite of the efforts of the captain and his helpers the sailors succeeded in slashing away the davit tackle. A swelling roller came up to meet the boat as the last strand gave way and swept it, with its freight, out into the night. But as it went Mayo clutched a davit pulley and swung in midair.

The dizzy depths of the sea opened under him as he dangled there and gazed down.

An instant later all his attention was focused on Alma Marston, who stood in the companionway clutching its sides and shrieking out her fears. The lantern showed her to him plainly. Its radiance lighted him also. He called to her several times, angrily at last.

“Where is that man, Bradish?” he demanded, fiercely.

It seemed as if his arms would be pulled out. He could not reach the davit iron from where he hung; the schooner's rail was too far away, though he kicked his feet in that direction.

“Don't be a fool! Stop that screaming,” he told her. “Can Bradish!”

“He is sick--he--he--is frightened,” she faltered.

“Come out here! Pull on that rope! Swing me in, I can't hold on here much longer. Do you want to see me drown?”

She came along the rail, clinging to it.

“No, not that rope! The other one! Pull hard!”

She obeyed, fighting back her fear. The davit swung inward slowly, and he managed to slide his legs up over the rail and gain the deck.

“Thank you!” he gasped. “You're quite a sailor!”

He had been wondering what his first words to her would be. Even while he swung over the yawning depths of the sea the problem of his love was so much more engrossing than his fear of death that his thoughts were busy with her. He tried to speak to her with careless tone; it had been in his mind that he would speak and bow and walk away. But he could not move when she opened her eyes on him. She was as motionless as he--a silent, staring pallid statue of astounded fright. The rope slipped slowly from her relaxing fingers.

“Yes! It's just the man you think it is,” he informed her, curtly. “But there's nothing to be said!”

“I must say something--”

But he checked her savagely. “This is no place to talk over folly! It's no place to talk anything! There's something else to do besides talk!”

“We are going to die, aren't we?” She leaned close to him, and the question was hardly more than a whisper framed by her quivering lips.

“I think so,” he answered, brutally.