Chapter XLVI
Four more days have passed; the gale has blown itself out; we are not
more than three hundred and fifty miles off Valparaiso; and the
Elsinore, this time due to me and my own stubbornness, is rolling in
the wind and heading nowhere in a light breeze at the rate of nothing but
driftage per hour.
In the height of the gusts, in the three days and nights of the gale, we
logged as much as eight, and even nine, knots. What bothered me was the
acquiescence of the mutineers in my programme. They were sensible enough
in the simple matter of geography to know what I was doing. They had
control of the sails, and yet they permitted me to run for the South
American coast.
More than that, as the gale eased on the morning of the third day, they
actually went aloft, set top-gallant-sails, royals, and skysails, and
trimmed the yards to the quartering breeze. This was too much for the
Saxon streak in me, whereupon I wore the Elsinore about before the
wind, fetched her up upon it, and lashed the wheel. Margaret and I are
agreed in the hypothesis that their plan is to get inshore until land is
sighted, at which time they will desert in the boats.
"But we don't want them to desert," she proclaims with flashing eyes. "We
are bound for Seattle. They must return to duty. They've got to, soon, for they are beginning to starve."
"There isn't a navigator aft," I oppose.
Promptly she withers me with her scorn.
"You, a master of books, by all the sea-blood in your body should be able
to pick up the theoretics of navigation while I snap my fingers. Furthermore, remember that I can supply the seamanship. Why, any squarehead peasant, in a six months' cramming course at any seaport navigation school, can pass the examiners for his navigator's papers. That means six hours for you. And less. If you can't, after an hour's reading and an hour's practice with the sextant, take a latitude observation and work it out, I'll do it for you."
"You mean you know?"
She shook her head.
"I mean, from the little I know, that I know I can learn to know a
meridian sight and the working out of it. I mean that I can learn to
know inside of two hours."
Strange to say, the gale, after easing to a mild breeze, recrudesced in a
sort of after-clap. With sails untrimmed and flapping, the consequent
smashing, crashing, and rending of our gear can be imagined. It brought
out in alarm every man for'ard.
"Trim the yards!" I yelled at Bert Rhine, who, backed for counsel by
Charles Davis and the Maltese Cockney, actually came directly beneath me
on the main deck in order to hear above the commotion aloft.
"Keep a-runnin, an' you won't have to trim," the gangster shouted up to
me.
"Want to make land, eh?" I girded down at him. "Getting hungry, eh? Well, you won't make land or anything else in a thousand years once you get all your top-hamper piled down on deck."
I have forgotten to state that this occurred at midday yesterday.
"What are you goin' to do if we trim?" Charles Davis broke in.
"Run off shore," I replied, "and get your gang out in deep sea where it
will be starved back to duty."
"We'll furl, an' let you heave to," the gangster proposed.
I shook my head and held up my rifle. "You'll have to go aloft to do it, and the first man that gets into the shrouds will get this."
"Then she can go to hell for all we care," he said, with emphatic
conclusiveness.
And just then the fore-topgallant-yard carried away--luckily as the bow
was down-pitched into a trough of sea-and when the slow, confused, and
tangled descent was accomplished the big stick lay across the wreck of
both bulwarks and of that portion of the bridge between the foremast and
the forecastle head.
Bert Rhine heard, but could not see, the damage wrought. He looked up at
me challengingly, and sneered:
"Want some more to come down?"