X
On the exposed deck the storm met the two adventurers with a yell. For the first time Bess knew its full fury, as the wind buffeted her, and the sleet swept like fine shot into her face. They clung to the railing, then fought their way to the hold.
Hidden by the darkness and the sleet, no one saw them carry up the heavy liquor cases and drop them into the sea. The noise of the storm concealed the little sound they made. Finally only two bottles remained, the last of a broken case.
“You take one of those and ditch it in your room,” McNab advised. “I'll keep the other. There might come a time when we'll find real need for 'em—as a stimulant for some one who is freezing.”
“Take care of both of them,” Bess urged. “I'm not sure I could keep mine, if any one asked for it.”
“I don't know about that. I believe I'd bet on you. And now it's done—forget about it.”
Soon they crept back along the deck, McNab to his work, Bess to her stateroom. The latter ignited the lantern that served to light her room, and for a moment stood staring into the little mirror that hung above her washstand. She hadn't escaped the fear of the night and the storm and of the bold deed she had just done. Her deep, blue eyes were wide, her face was pale, the childlike appeal Ned had noticed long ago was more pronounced than ever. Presently she sat down to await developments.
They were not long in coming. She and McNab had all but encountered Ned on his way to the hold. His bottles were empty, and the desire for strong drink had not left him yet. In the darkness under the deck he groped blindly for his cases.
They seemed to evade him. Breathing hard, he sought a match, scratching it against the wall. Then he stared in dumb and incredulous astonishment.
His stock of liquor was gone. Not even the cases were left. Thinking that perhaps some shift in the position of the stores had concealed them, he made a moment's frantic search through the hold. Then, raging like a child, and in imminent danger of slipping on the perilous deck, he rushed to the pilot house.
“Captain, do you know what became of my liquors?” he demanded. “I can't find them in the hold.”
The binnacle light revealed the frenzy and desperation on his drawn face; the mouth was no longer smiling its crooked, boyish smile. Knutsen glanced at him once, then turned his eyes once more over his wheel. For the moment he did not seem to be aware of Ned's presence. He made, however, one significant motion: his brown hand reached out to the bottle beside him, in which perhaps two good drinks remained, and softly set it among the shadows at his feet.
“I say!” Ned urged. “I tell you my liquor's gone!”
The captain seemed to be studying the yellow path that his searchlight cut in the darkness. The waves were white-capped and raging; the sleet swept out of the gloom, gleamed a moment in the yellow radiance, then sped on into the night.
“I heard you,” Knutsen answered slowly. “I was thinking about it. I haven't any idea who took it—if he's still got it, I'll see that he gives it back. It was a dirty trick”
“You don't know, then, anything about it?” As he waited, Ned got the unmistakable idea that the captain neither knew nor really cared. He was more interested in retaining the two remaining drinks in his own bottle than in helping Ned regain his lost cases. These two were enough for him. It was wholly in keeping with that strange psychology of drunkards that he should have no further cares.
“Of course I don't know r anything about 'em—but I'll help you investigate in the morning,” he answered. “I'm very sorry, Mr. Cornet—that it should happen aboard my ship”
“To hell with your ship! I'm going to investigate to-night.”
Ned started out, but he halted in the doorway, arrested by a sudden suspicion. Presently he whirled and made his way to Bess's stateroom.
He knocked sharply on the door. Bess opened it wide. Then for a long second he stared into her deep-blue, appealing eyes.
“I suppose you did it?” he demanded.
She nodded. “I did it—to save you—from yourself. Not to mention perhaps saving the ship as well.”
His lip drew up in scorn. Angry almost to the verge of childish tears, he could not at first trust himself to speak. “You've certainly taken things into your own hands,” he told her bitterly. His wrath gathered, breaking from him at last in a flood. “You ill-bred prude, I wish I could never lay eyes on you again!”
His scornful eyes saw the pain well into her face. Evidently he had gone the limit: he couldn't have hurt her worse with a blow of his hand. Touched a little in spite of himself, he began to feel the first prick of remorse. Perhaps it had done no good to speak so cruelly. Certainly the whiskies could not be regained. Probably the fool thought she was acting for his own good. He turned, slammed the door, and strode back to the dining saloon.
It was by far the most bitter moment in Bess's life. She had done right, but her payment was a curse from the man she had hoped to serve. All her castles had fallen: her dreams had broken like the bubbles they were. This was the answer to the calling in her heart and the longing in her soul,—the spoken wish that she might pass from his sight forever.
For the last few days, since they had entered this strange, snowy, twilight region, she had had dreams such as she had never dared admit into her heart before. Anything could happen up here. No wonder was too great. It was the kind of place where men found themselves, where all things were in proper balance, and false standards fell away. Some way, she had been on the lookout for a miracle. But the things which had been proven false, which could not live in this bitter world of realities, were her own dreams! They had been the only things that had died. She had been a fool to hope that here, at the wintry edge of the world, she might find the happiness she had missed in her native city. The world was with her yet, crushing her hopes as its rocky crust crushes the fallen nestling before it learns to fly!
But at his post McNab had already forgotten the episode of the liquor cases. Indeed, he had forgot ten many other matters of much greater moment. At the present his mind was wholly occupied by two stern realities,—one of them being that the storm still raged in unabated fury, and the other that a drunken captain was driving his craft at a breakneck speed over practically uncharted waters.
The danger lay not only in the fact that Knutsen had disregarded McNab's good advice to seek shelter in one of the island harbors. Even now he was disregarding the way of comparative safety, was not pausing to take soundings, but was racing along before the wind instead of heading into it with the power of the auxiliary engines. With wind and wave hurling her forward, there would be no chance to turn back or avoid any island reef that might suddenly loom in their path. Knutsen was trusting to his sea gods over waters he had never sailed before, torn by storms and lighted only by a feeble searchlight.
Once more McNab lifted his head through the hatch into the pilot house; and for long seconds he studied intently the flushed face over the wheel. They hadn't really helped matters, so far as Knutsen was concerned, by throwing the cases overboard. Seemingly his watch would be over before the fumes of the liquor he had already consumed died in his brain. At present he was in its full flush: wholly reckless, obstinate, uncertain of temper. Was there any possible good in appealing to him further?
“What now?” Knutsen asked gruffly.
“You've forgotten all the seamanship you ever knew,” McNab returned angrily. “There's no hurry about reaching Tzar Island. And you're risking everybody's life on board, sailing the way you are.”
“Are you captain of dis boat?” Knutsen demanded angrily.
“No, but”
“Den get out of here. I know exactly what I'm doing. You're just as safe as”
But it came about that Captain Knutsen did not finish the sentence. McNab was never to find out, from Knutsen's lips, just how safe he was. All at once he cried sharply in warning.
Before ever Knutsen heard that sharp cry, he knew what lay ahead. Dulled though his vision was, slow the processes of his brain, he saw that curious ridge of white foam in front,—an inoffensive-looking trail of white across their bows. At the same instant his keen ears caught a new sound, one that was only half-revealed in the roar and beat of the storm.
There was not the pause of an instant before his great, muscular arms made response. At the same instant Forest tried to apply the power of his engines in obedience to the sharp gong from above. And then both Knutsen and McNab braced themselves for the shock they knew would come.
The craft seemed to leap in the water, shuddered like a living thing, and the swath of the searchlight described a long arc into the sleet and the storm. It may have been that Knutsen shouted again—a meaningless sound that was lost quickly in the wind—but for seconds that seemed to drag into interminable centuries he sat absolutely without outward sign of motion. His great hands clutched his wheel, the muscles were set and bunched, but it was as if the man had died and was frozen rigid in an instant of incredible tension. His face utterly without expression, Forest crouched beside his engines.
There was nothing that either of them could do. The waves and wind were a power no man could stay. All their efforts were as useless as Knutsen's shout; already the little ship was in the remorseless grasp of a great billow that was hurling her toward the ridge of white foam in front. For another instant she seemed to hang suspended, as if suddenly taken wing, and then there was a sheer drop, a sense of falling out of the world. A queer ripping, tearing sound, not loud at all, not half so terrifying as the bluster of the wind, reached them from the hold.
Cold sober, Knutsen turned in his place and gonged down certain orders to Forest. In scarcely a moment, it seemed, they were pulling the battens from the two little lifeboats on the deck.