Then the beam sea submerged her, and by it I was carried across the poop deck, and found myself held under the wheel-box, with both legs pinned in a vise-like grip by the tiller, which extended forward of the rudder-head. Although dazed and strangled by the terrible impact of the water, I managed to twist the upper part of my body towards the wheel and to murmur, "For God's sake keep her off."
My weakened voice was lost in the tempest. There were no ears to hear my pleadings. The men at the wheel were gone. Gone, indeed, to a watery grave, and perhaps the others also. With me it would not take long. Just another raking like the last one, and then the finish. Again the cook's words echoed louder than the raging storm, "Do we finish here?"
As I lay there pinned to the deck, too helpless to even call aloud, and as it seemed waiting, waiting, for the executioner to spring the deadly trap, I was conscious that the door of the companion-way had closed with a bang so terrific that it sounded above the storm. I twisted my head and shoulders around to see if I dared to hope. There before me stood the Hindoo stowaway. He did not notice me lying there pinned under the wheel-box, nor could I manage to attract his attention.
With opal eyes glowing green and fiery red, he sprang to the wheel, and with magnificent strength pulled on the spokes till they screeched louder than the storm as they were dislodged from their oxidized fittings. Harder and harder he pulled on the wheel. He didn't even notice the seas breaking over him. The mysterious thing about him was that he seemed to know what he was doing. He was keeping her off before it.
In doing this he removed the tiller from my legs. At last I was free. As I struggled and crawled to the weather-rail for support, the Hindoo shouted in clear and ringing tones, in true seamanlike fashion, looking neither to the right nor left, but straight ahead, as if staring into a land-locked harbor. He repeated his order for the second time in a high tenor voice:
"Get an axe out of the donkey-room and cut away the lee martingale guy. Your flying-jibboom is gone overboard and is still held by the lee guy. It is plowing a hole in the port bow."
I knew but one law. The law of self-preservation. My arms were locked tight around the stanchion that supported the weather-rail. That quick command of the Hindoo brought me sharply to the realization that I was not yet given that quick despatch to the land of nowhere, but was still in the flesh, and very much alive. My first rational thought was, "What in Hell is the Hindoo doing at the wheel?" My pride as a sailor resented the affront put upon my ability as a sailor by a stowaway who was daring to assume the command of my ship, and daring to issue orders to me.