"While you're about it, get in the skysails and royals!" I shouted down. "And make a decent job of the gasketing!"Both Charles Davis and the Maltese Cockney advertised their relief in their faces as they heard my words, and, at a nod from the gangster, they started for'ard on the run to put the orders into effect.
Never, in the whole voyage, did our crew spring to it in more lively fashion. And lively fashion was needed to save our gear. As it was, they cut away the remnants of the mizzen-lower-topsail with their sheath-knives, and they loosed the main-skysail out of its bolt-ropes.
The first infraction of our agreement was on the main-lower-topsail.
This they attempted to furl. The carrying away of the crojack and the blowing away of the mizzen-lower-topsail gave me freedom to see and aim, and when the tiny messengers from my rifle began to spat through the canvas and to spat against the steel of the yard, the men strung along it desisted from passing the gaskets. I waved my will to Bert Rhine, who acknowledged me and ordered the sail set again and the yard trimmed.
"What is the use of running off-shore?" I said to Margaret, when the kites were snugged down and all yards trimmed on the wind. "Three hundred and fifty miles off the land is as good as thirty-five hundred so far as starvation is concerned."So, instead of making speed through the water toward deep sea, I hove the Elsinore to on the starboard tack with no more than leeway driftage to the west and south.
But our gallant mutineers had their will of us that very night. In the darkness we could hear the work aloft going on as yards were run down, sheets let go, and sails dewed up and gasketed. I did try a few random shots, and all my reward was to hear the whine and creak of ropes through sheaves and to receive an equally random fire of revolver-shots.
It is a most curious situation. We of the high place are masters of the steering of the Elsinore, while those for'ard are masters of the motor power. The only sail that is wholly ours is the spanker. They control absolutely--sheets, halyards, clewlines, buntlines, braces, and down-hauls--every sail on the fore and main. We control the braces on the mizzen, although they control the canvas on the mizzen.
For that matter, Margaret and I fail to comprehend why they do not go aloft any dark night and sever the mizzen-braces at the yard-ends.
All that prevents this, we are decided, is laziness. For if they did sever the braces that lead aft into our hands, they would be compelled to rig new braces for'ard in some fashion, else, in the rolling, would the mizzenmast be stripped of every spar.
And still the mutiny we are enduring is ridiculous and grotesque.
There was never a mutiny like it. It violates all standards and precedents. In the old classic mutinies, long ere this, attacking like tigers, the seamen should have swarmed over the poop and killed most of us or been most of them killed.
Wherefore I sneer at our gallant mutineers, and recommend trained nurses for them, quite in the manner of Mr. Pike. But Margaret shakes her head and insists that human nature is human nature, and that under similar circumstances human nature will express itself similarly. In short, she points to the number of deaths that have already occurred, and declares that on some dark night, sooner or later, whenever the pinch of hunger sufficiently sharpens, we shall see our rascals storming aft.
And in the meantime, except for the tenseness of it, and for the incessant watchfulness which Margaret and I alone maintain, it is more like a mild adventure, more like a page out of some book of romance which ends happily.
It is surely romance, watch and watch for a man and a woman who love, to relieve each other's watches. Each such relief is a love passage and unforgettable. Never was there wooing like it--the muttered surmises of wind and weather, the whispered councils, the kissed commands in palms of hands, the dared contacts of the dark.
Oh, truly, I have often, since this voyage began, told the books to go hang. And yet the books are at the back of the race-life of me.
I am what I am out of ten thousand generations of my kind. Of that there is no discussion. And yet my midnight philosophy stands the test of my breed. I must have selected my books out of the ten thousand generations that compose me. I have killed a man--Steve Roberts. As a perishing blond without an alphabet I should have done this unwaveringly. As a perishing blond with an alphabet, plus the contents in my brain of the philosophizing of all philosophers, Ihave killed this same man with the same unwaveringness. Culture has not emasculated me. I am quite unaffected. It was in the day's work, and my kind have always been day-workers, doing the day's work, whatever it might be, in high adventure or dull ploddingness, and always doing it.
Never would I ask to set back the dial of time or event. I would kill Steve Roberts again, under the same circumstances, as a matter of course. When I say I am unaffected by this happening I do not quite mean it. I am affected. I am aware that the spirit of me is informed with a sober elation of efficiency. I have done something that had to be done, as any man will do what has to be done in the course of the day's work.
Yes, I am a perishing blond, and a man, and I sit in the high place and bend the stupid ones to my will; and I am a lover, loving a royal woman of my own perishing breed, and together we occupy, and shall occupy, the high place of government and command until our kind perish from the earth.
