Surely you are up to that.A child could steer this ship in smooth water."He muttered: "Aye! A healthy child." And Ifelt ashamed of having been passed over by the fever which had been preying on every man's strength but mine, in order that my remorse might be the more bitter, the feeling of unworthiness more poignant, and the sense of responsibility heavier to bear.
The ship had gathered great way on her almost at once on the calm water.I felt her slipping through it with no other noise but a mysterious rustle alongside.Otherwise, she had no motion at all, neither lift nor roll.It was a disheartening steadiness which had lasted for eighteen days now; for never, never had we had wind enough in that time to raise the slightest run of the sea.The breeze freshened suddenly.I thought it was high time to get Mr.Burns off the deck.He worried me.I looked upon him as a lunatic who would be very likely to start roaming over the ship and break a limb or fall overboard.
I was truly glad to find he had remained holding on where I had left him, sensibly enough.He was, however, muttering to himself ominously.
This was discouraging.I remarked in a matter-of-fact tone:
"We have never had so much wind as this since we left the roads.""There's some heart in it, too," he growled judiciously.It was a remark of a perfectly sane seaman.But he added immediately: "It was about time I should come on deck.I've been nursing my strength for this--just for this.Do you see it, sir?"I said I did, and proceeded to hint that it would be advisable for him to go below now and take a rest.
His answer was an indignant "Go below! Not if I know it, sir."Very cheerful! He was a horrible nuisance.And all at once he started to argue.I could feel his crazy excitement in the dark.
"You don't know how to go about it, sir.How could you? All this whispering and tiptoeing is no good.You can't hope to slink past a cunning, wide-awake, evil brute like he was.You never heard him talk.Enough to make your hair stand on end.No! No! He wasn't mad.He was no more mad than I am.He was just downright wicked.Wicked so as to frighten most people.Iwill tell you what he was.He was nothing less than a thief and a murderer at heart.And do you think he's any different now because he's dead?
Not he! His carcass lies a hundred fathom under, but he's just the same...in latitude 8 d 20'
north."
He snorted defiantly.I noted with weary resig-nation that the breeze had got lighter while he raved.He was at it again.
"I ought to have thrown the beggar out of the ship over the rail like a dog.It was only on ac-count of the men....Fancy having to read the Burial Service over a brute like that!...'Our departed brother'...I could have laughed.
That was what he couldn't bear.I suppose I am the only man that ever stood up to laugh at him.
When he got sick it used to scare that...
brother....Brother....Departed.
...Sooner call a shark brother."
The breeze had let go so suddenly that the way of the ship brought the wet sails heavily against the mast.The spell of deadly stillness had caught us up again.There seemed to be no escape.
"Hallo!" exclaimed Mr.Burns in a startled voice."Calm again!"I addressed him as though he had been sane.
"This is the sort of thing we've been having for seventeen days, Mr.Burns," I said with intense bitterness."A puff, then a calm, and in a mo-ment, you'll see, she'll be swinging on her heel with her head away from her course to the devil some-where."
He caught at the word."The old dodging Devil," he screamed piercingly and burst into such a loud laugh as I had never heard before.It was a provoking, mocking peal, with a hair-raising, screeching over-note of defiance.I stepped back, utterly confounded.
Instantly there was a stir on the quarter-deck;murmurs of dismay.A distressed voice cried out in the dark below us: "Who's that gone crazy, now?"Perhaps they thought it was their captain?
Rush is not the word that could be applied to the utmost speed the poor fellows were up to; but in an amazing short time every man in the ship able to walk upright had found his way on to that poop.
I shouted to them: "It's the mate.Lay hold of him a couple of you...."I expected this performance to end in a ghastly sort of fight.But Mr.Burns cut his derisive screeching dead short and turned upon them fiercely, yelling:
"Aha! Dog-gone ye! You've found your tongues--have ye? I thought you were dumb.
Well, then--laugh! Laugh--I tell you.Now then --all together.One, two, three--laugh!"A moment of silence ensued, of silence so pro-found that you could have heard a pin drop on the deck.Then Ransome's unperturbed voice uttered pleasantly the words:
"I think he has fainted, sir--" The little motionless knot of men stirred, with low murmurs of relief."I've got him under the arms.Get hold of his legs, some one."Yes.It was a relief.He was silenced for a time--for a time.I could not have stood another peal of that insane screeching.I was sure of it;and just then Gambril, the austere Gambril, treated us to another vocal performance.He began to sing out for relief.His voice wailed pitifully in the darkness: "Come aft somebody! I can't stand this.Here she'll be off again directly and Ican't...."
I dashed aft myself meeting on my way a hard gust of wind whose approach Gambril's ear had detected from afar and which filled the sails on the main in a series of muffled reports mingled with the low plaint of the spars.I was just in time to seize the wheel while Frenchy who had followed me caught up the collapsing Gambril.He hauled him out of the way, admonished him to lie still where he was, and then stepped up to relieve me, asking calmly:
"How am I to steer her, sir?"
