Captain Adam (12 page)

But wild panic seized them. With a flash of oars, and bending low over the thwarts, they flustered away like a flock of shot-over birds.

An hour later, when the sun had set and a breeze had come at last, there was no sign of them.

"You have a voice of rare quality," the skipper told his passenger that night, "but I like it better up near like this."

"Maybe— Maybe what that man said is right."

"Maybe it is."'

"We keep on this way, Adam—the two of us here every day, every night—" She was trying to make it sound frivolous, as became her training, fashionable; but when he swiveled his eyes toward her he saw that she was staring mighty hard at a horizon that had nothing notably interesting about it and in fact could hardly be seen. "La, sir, it could even be that on some tropic night, under the rich rolling Caribbean moon, you could—well, sir, you could conceivably seduce me into bundling with you.

"You bundle with me," Adam said sententiously, "and it won't be with your skirt tied down over your feet."

She tried to laugh at this, but the sound of a sob was heard, and when she started away he was afraid he had wounded her. But she came right back.

"No, really, maybe you'd better, Adam! Better return to Jamaica!"

He looked at her a long time, and it all but made his heart stop, she was so beautiful. Sitting next to her, occasionally brushing her arm or being brushed by a stray fluttering lock of her hair, perhaps watching her hands in her lap, was not like this now—gazing smack into her eyes. He seemed to rock and wobble. He felt that he might explode, blow up like a bombard, or else faint dead away. It was too much. He couldn't keep it up.

"Please, Adam!"

He cleared his throat. After all, he had his position to think of.

"I am the master of this vessel," he said, "and when I want advice I'll ask for it."

1 /;? It tugged at him as a temptation, next morning while he

X \J lifted the Book out of his chest, to pick for a text at prayers

something that would twit the doubting Thomases of the previous day, for they were fully through the Windward Passage now—though still in Pirate Alley—and pranced along handsomely in a sea they had all to themselves under a serene high sky in which there was not even the edge of a raincloud, though this was the season for rains.

"When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice?" No. That'd sound as if he was overfond of himself.

"Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves . . ." "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams . . ." No, again. He wasn't quite sure of either of these, and it would take him some time to look them up.

Best thing to do was drop the whole matter anyway. The men were over it, no use embarrassing them. They deserved a rest, relaxation. No doubt they were a whit ashamed of the way they had acted. And Seth Selden was his eld shipboard self again, eyes twinkling, mouth twisted to slip out some elliptical sarcastic remark. There wasn't a touch of the hysteria that had moved him yesterday, and he didn't even seem to have a spiritual hangover to remind him of how he had acted.

Seth was even unrepentent enough to put on, as he did so many mornings at prayer time, a mock air of piety. He was small-boyish about it, the old scoundrel. He simpered.

Yet even the irreverent Seth straightened his face when he heard the verses Adam read from the Book. For he remembered them, as all the men there did: they were the same verses Adam had selected for reading when Eliphalet Mellish's body was slid overside. They were among Adam's favorites. In the midst of life, he aimed to remind the hands, we are in death.

". . . when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory."

He did not feel that this was personal, so to speak; for he had already thanked the Lord in his pravers for having spared the schooner; and now he was able to make it a good show to see. He raised an arm, raised his voice too:

He finished on a quieter, more assured note:

"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."

He closed the volume, and lowered his head and kept his eyes shut a moment—not in prayer but because he was overwhelmed by the eloquence. The Book often did that to him.

He opened his eyes, looking up, and saw, where a moment before had been clear blue sky, a storm.

This in itself was not unusual. Given the latitude and the season, you were bound to have storms—dark ones, noisy ones, not very dangerous storms, each brief. They came singly, also massed. Wall-like to see, some straight, others wobbling, they would march in a menacing manner clear across the firmament, to get, most of 'em, nowhere. There was nothing surreptitious about them: you could see them for miles, and hear them almost as far. For they were crammed with rain, these breathlessly low clouds, and set up a deafening clatter as they moved.

The limits of any one of these storms were most marvelously clear-cut. In this they were not unlike summer thundershowers at home, only more so. By no means all of them, or even all of the ones that started for the schooner as though drawn by an immense magnet, struck Goodwill to Men. The hands—though Adam frowned on the practice—used to sit on the main hatch and watch them approach and lay bets on whether or not they would hit. Sometimes one would pass within a few feet of the vessel, so that you thought you could reach out and get your hand wet, and the downpour would be such that you could not see the horizon on that side, though elsewhere the sea was smooth and bright; yet not a drop would fall on deck. When one did envelop the Goodwill to Men it would be in a gray hissing mist, and there was nothing you could do but hang on and wait it out: they never lasted for more than a few minutes. Even if somebody was standing right next to you and you shouted at him, he couldn't hear you. You could not see from gunwale to gunwale. Then suddenly it would all be gone—all except a frantic scampering of water in the scuppers, with the sun shining on it already, and the receding clack-and-slap of rain on the surface of the sea. Then there would not be even that, and you would find it hard to believe that there had ever been any disturbance in this exquisitely beautiful day.

What Adam saw now was a greater and more horrible thing: a wall or column of darkness rushing toward them, but no rain drops with it, only a low ominous moaning. Surely it was moving faster than any tropical rainstorm, for already it was almost upon them. 78

He had never seen anything like it. None of them had. The moaning swelled to a high howl. The air around them tingled, taut with expectancy, and got bright, even iridescent, like a swelling soap bubble just before it bursts.

The seas had been running short and even, satiny of\ the surface, showing no white. But now, abruptly, all around the schooner the water leapt high, the waves tumbling every-which-way, as though half a dozen swift ocean currents converged at just this spot.

There was a spitting sound and they saw flashes of lightning close and low, blue lightning, some of the hands said afterward; others said yellow.

Then darkness.

All hands were on deck, as they always were for prayers, and that was a blessing; for in such weather the forecastle hatch habitually was left open, so that when the storm hit it filled the forecasde almost instantly with water, and if any man had been in there at the time he'd have been drowned like a rat.

Everybody it seemed spotted the storm at the same moment, and they all sprang into action. Resolved Forbes and his skipper were shouting orders in the time they had; but the hands knew what to do anyway.

The boy Rellison ran aft for the tiller, where it was his trick.

Jethro Gardner had been doing some work on the long boat at the time of the call to prayers, and in consequence this was not lashed. Grabbing a line, Jeth ran for it. The long boat was heavy; and if it took over, in a blow like this, it could do a powerful lot of smashing.

The mate, shouting orders, made for the main halyards. Others went for the fore halyards or forward to the jibs. They were going to strike every inch of canvas—if they were given a chance.

As for Adam, he went for Lady Maisie.

Her cabin hatch* was closed. He knew this, having closed it at her request—she complained that the vwnd would riffle her finery hung down there—when he was about to conduct her forward for prayers. They'd not have time to get to it, open it, stuff her down that steep ladder, make fast the hatch. She must be sheltered somewhere here.

She opened her mouth to say something, but he shook his head. He hooked a leg behind her legs and shoved her so that she sat down thud-dingly, her back against the starboard grating. "Hang on!" and he started away; but he remembered the irons and turned back. It was at this grating that Waters and Peterson had been chained, and the irons still hung there. If they got to whanging back and forth, as they might well do, they could brain her.

So he made his passenger fast. Before she knew what he was doing,

before even she had got over the jolt of being thrown down on her backside, he had locked two shackles on each ankle, two on each wrist. Good. That would hold both irons and lady in place.

He was racing aft when the storm hit.

It was incredible that any disturbance of nature could catch up to them so swiftly in the vast peaceful sea, equally incredible that its onset should be like an explosion. It slammed Adam Long against the starboard gunwale, tipped him up, came near to toppling him over. He hung, gasping, for a terrible moment. All he could see was a lather of water inches from his face. The schooner must have been all but on her beam-ends. Would she broach-to? She'd snap her sticks if she did, perhaps even turn upside-down, squashing the life out of all of them.

He wriggled back to the deck, fought his way aft. The Rellison boy desperately clinging to the tiller was being snapped back and forth like a rag. He was trying hard, he was sobbing. He just didn't have the muscle. Adam reached him barely in time. With their combined weight they got her over, and Goodwill, shuddering, righted herself.

Nobody remembered much about the actual duration of that storm afterward. It seemed long to most. But it might have lasted merely minutes. Descriptions differed wildly. Even the names of the storm differed: some swore that it was a waterspout, others called it a white squall, while Seth Selden was not the only one who was wont to refer to it as the Visitation. Some said it rained pitchforks, others that there was no rain at all. It was wet enough in all conscience, for the seas thamped over the schooner again and again. A few said that there was thunder. They were all agreed that there was lightning, closer-up than any of them had ever known, though there were many opinions of the shapes it took, the colors it showed.

Adam spent most of the storm hanging on to the tiller, bucking it, bracing it, side by side with young Abel Rellison, who, to give him credit, never faltered. Back and forth they went, back and forth, fighting. They lost all sense of time. They couldn't see much—no other men at all. They didn't even try to shout at one another but saved their wind.

And this, reflected Adam, is the same lad who a few hours ago was thinking of bashing my skull in—and this is the very stick he was thinking of doing it with!

He grinned at young Rellison, who grinned back. They struggled on.

The let-up was abrupt, and it was cruel, more of a shock, physically, than the onset. A couple of the men almost fainted. The boy Rellison flopped down on the deck. Adam went forward.

The sticks remained, also the bowsprit. Most of the standing rigging still stood. The long boat was gone, and it must have been its departure that had torn out a good fifteen feet of the larboard gunwale amidships,

leaving nothing but splinters. The foremast boom was gone but the sail itself had been saved. The mainsail, too, had been saved; it must have been by a tremendous effort. Both jibs were gone.

John Bond had dislocated his left wrist. Jethro Gardner's right leg had been smashed, badly, while he tussled wdth the long boat. They were all banged and bruised a good bit.

Adam hiked Lady Maisie's skirt and petticoat down, then went for the key. It took some time, the forecastle being flooded. When he returned, and was releasing her, she nodded toward Jeth Gardner, in a swoon now.

"We must carry him to my cabin. He's a brave man, Adam."

"Aye," said the skipper, who would take such a thing for granted of Jeth Gardner. "Well, now you've seen what the sea can do, you'll understand why we all hate it so."

"La, 'twas exciting," said Maisie.

n There, among the perfumes and pomatum, the spikenard and

rice powder, where rosewater rocked in its jars, and from a score of pegs silk and satin and flimsy frilled muslin swung with the movement of the schooner. Bosun Gardner lay in a bunk until recently the domain of Resolved Forbes. It was there that Adam broke the news to him.

Likely enough Jeth was expecting it, but this was not the reason why he made it easier to say. Lying there, he had been grumping. Adam would have worried still more about the state of the bosun's health if he hadn't grumped. A Jeth who found the world satisfactory would be a Jeth on the very threshold of extinction.

"Been down here two days and nights now, and you got to get me out, Cap'n. Ain't no place for a man."

Adam grinned.

"What's the matter with this cabin?"

"Might've been all right when you and Mr. Forbes was here, but not now. Oh, she means first-rate! It was chirk of her to think of it, and I appreciate that and all. But I can't stay here."

"What's the matter with this cabin?" Adam asked again.

"Well, for one thing, it stinks."

"Coming from a man who's spent most of his life in forecastles—"

"I'm used to that kind of smell. I ain't used to this—" and he waved his hand to indicate the bottles, the jars.