CHAPTER XVUNDER WAY
Hewas routed out before dawn by Satan. The cabin lamp was lit, the table spread, and Jude was bringing in coffee. She seemed in a bad temper, and as he huddled himself into his clothes he could hear her:
“Knockin’ myself about in the dark! That old slush lamp in the galley don’t burn worth a cent. What you want haulin’ out this hour for?”
And to her Satan:
“Wind will be up with the sun—where’s them biscuits? We’ve got to get the dinghy aboard yet, and all that raffle forward stowed, and it’ll be light enough in another ten minutes.”
“Where’s Rat?”
“He’s comin’.”
He sat down to table opposite Jude. She scarcely gave him good morning. The face that had looked so well framed by the porthole of the dream ship was cross, almost sullen. He thought for a moment that her ill-temper was directed toward Satan as well as himself; then, in some subtle way, he knew it wasn’t. Early rising may have helped; but he was the cause. What had he done? He could not think.
He remembered how she had acted when he had stood up for her the night before. It was just the same this morning.
Satan said the coffee was burnt,—tasted like bud barley, and ought to be slung in the slush tub. Ratcliffe stood up for the coffee, but was cut short by Jude.
“I reckon it’s beastly,” said Jude; “but I haven’t more’n two hands to be gettin’ the things on the table and the coffee boiled—and some folks snoring in their bunks!”
“Shet up!” said Satan, ruffled at this wanton attack on the guest “And talkin’ of snorin’, I reckon you can give any man points and beat him, once you lay down to it. Why, you shake the ship so that I’ve woke often of nights thinkin’ we’d got adrift and was dudderin’ over sandbanks.”
“Lord love you for a liar!” was all Jude said. She refused help in clearing away the things, joining them on deck a few minutes later, just as day was coming into the eastern sky.
The problem of how to get the dinghy aboard had not occurred to Ratcliffe till now. TheSarah Tylerpossessed no davits, and though the old canvas boat was easy to handle as an umbrella, the sturdy little dinghy was a different matter.
Standing in the half-dark with a faint wind bringing the smell of the early morning sea, sharp as the smell of a new-drawn sword, he questioned Satan on the subject.
“Get her aboard?” said Satan. “Oh, I’ll durn soonget her aboard. Davits! God love you! what do you want them things for?”
“Except for hoistin’ fools off the ship?” said the voice of Jude from the darkness. “Airyou goin’ to get a move on? You’ve got the old awning to take in and stow. Maybe you’ve forgotten it.”
They got the awning down and stowed, and then, against a train of fire crawling on the eastern sea-line and in a light that made the world like the vestibule of Fairyland, Satan set to on the problem of the dinghy. He had no doubt half a dozen dodges for the purpose. The one he employed was simply to unshackle the main halyards and fix them to the ring-bolt on the bow.
As they hauled on the tackle, and as if in answer to the creak of block and shrill chantey started by Satan, the races of the gulls blazed out. The deep-sea fishing gulls had long since started for sea; but the shore gulls, as though waiting for a convoy to follow, were round the stern of theSarah. Then, the dinghy secured, the throat and peak halyards were manned, and the mainsail rose slatting against the splendor of the morning.
The sun was over the sea-line now, the wind rising to meet him, and to starboard the fresh blue sea flooding against the wind showed theNatchez, her canvas rising and the fellows swarming at the ropes.
Satan had unlashed the wheel and was standing by it, now that the mainsail was set, shouting directions to his crew; and to Ratcliffe, as he labored with Jude getting the foresail and jib on her, the truth came in a flash that this was the real thing. The lazy peace of the lastcouple of days had broken all at once. Activity, Adventure, and Danger seemed suddenly to have boarded the oldSarah Tylerand delivered her as a prey to enormous and unknown forces.
He had never recognized till now the potential energy of canvas. The mainsail seemed horribly vast, out of all proportion to the hull; the slatting of the jib as they raised it spoke of an energy new born, viewless, and seeming to have little relationship to the warm and benign breeze.
But he had no time to think. The anchor was still to be had in, and as he helped with Jude at the windlass—Pap’s patent that would have raised a battleship—the threshing of the canvas with all sheets slack and the voice of Satan came urging speed.
Then, when the old killick was aboard and the sails trimmed, came Peace. With the wind on the starboard beam and the canvas hard against the blue theSarahsettled down to her work, Palm Island fading to westward, and to sou’west theNatchezwith all sail set in pursuit.
Jude’s bad temper seemed to have blown away on the wind, the surly look had gone from her face, and as she stood for a moment by Ratcliffe, looking over the weather rail, her mind seemed entirely occupied by Cleary.
“He’s blowing along,” said Jude; “but he’s feeling our pace. Not more than holding his own—and he had the cheek to tell me once his old tub could sail circles round theSarah!”
Satan at the wheel cocked his eye over his shoulder at theNatchez, spat, and refixed his gaze on the binnacle.
“Where’s your eyes?” asked Satan.
“In my head,” replied Jude. “What you gettin’ at?”
“He’s overhaulin’ us. Wonder he ain’t aboard! Time you was gettin’ that anchor up and handlin’ the jib.”
Ratcliffe was about to share the blame when, remembering the incident of the coffee, he checked himself and held his peace.
Satan was right. TheNatchezhad the pace of theSarah, at least under present wind conditions and under plain sail. The two boats had evidently never been matched before, and the gloom of the Tylers might have been gaged by their silence. Satan did not want to run away from Cleary; but he had promised him a “lead,” and this impudent display of the better sailing qualities of theNatchezwas like a derisive underscore to the promise.
Cleary, in this matter at least, was a very unwise man. He should have checked the speed of his boat by mishandling her or even trailing a drogher. Instead of that he held on, determined, evidently, to take the shine out of theSarahand pour derision on the head of Satan.
Ratcliffe, little as he knew of boat-craft, felt the situation. Being wise, he said nothing.
Suddenly Jude spoke.
“It’s her beams helping her. Try her on a wind and we’d knock flinders out of her. Lord! to think of being beat by that old cod boat! Say, cayn’t we do nothin’, crack on a balloon jib or somethin’?”
Satan laughed a mirthless laugh.
“S’much as to tell the cuss we’re beat. Don’t you think Cleary’s got no balloon jibs up his sleeve? Hain’t you no sense?”
They held on, theNatchezsteadily overhauling them till she was dead level half a mile away and drawing ahead.
Then, having demonstrated her superiority, she began to reduce sail so as to give theSarahthe lead.
Jude turned away and leaned with her back against the rail; then Satan told her to take the wheel and went below for a “wash.”