'I will fetch him directly,' Bella cried, full of excitement, and, swiftly, she ran down the companion to the saloon on her way to hammer on Gilbert's cabin-door and awaken him. But, as she reached the place she stopped, petrified almost and filled with a vague alarm at she scarcely knew what, while, at the same time, she smothered a shriek which rose to her lips, and exclaimed in its place: 'Bertie! Bertie! What is the matter?'
For she saw him standing by the saloon-table gazing at her, smiling even as he heard her loved voice, yet holding on to the edge with one hand while, with the other, he felt, as it seemed, cautiously before him. And again she cried: 'Bertie, what is it? What does it mean?'
Then she heard his voice saying: 'It means, darling, that I too am struck down. That I too am blind.'
Four seamen only left untouched by blindness now, and two officers, to work a ship of six hundred tons! How was it to be, how could it ever be, done? The task was hopeless, and so all recognised on board that unhappy, ill-omened ship, even as now the wind freshened and the bosom of the ocean became flecked with little white spits of foam, while the breeze, hot as the breath of a panting wolf, swept up from the south. A breeze hot now, though once it had been cool--glacial--as it left the icebergs of the Antarctic Circle.
What was to be done? they muttered now, as, together, the six unstricken men took counsel while they stood in the shade of the foredeck awning, and forgot, in their excitement, that one was the master and owner, the other the first officer, and the four remaining ones only poor, ignorant sailors. What! what! what!
'I,' exclaimed Pooley, at last, after much discussion, 'can at least steer her. Some one must do it if she is to move at all; otherwise, in spite of my seventeen stone, I would be up those ratlins like a boy. But, even then, of what use are five to fist all the canvas she can carry?'
'We can fist some of it, at any rate,' said Charke, strong, determined as ever. 'By Heaven!' he cried, 'Lieutenant Bampfyld shall never go back to any of Her Majesty's ships and say that half-a-dozen men under the red ensign couldn't do something; couldn't make one stroke to save themselves!' Then, in an instant, he asked the captain to go to the wheel, while he sent the man, whose trick it was, forward, and, a second later, he was issuing orders to his subordinates.