CHAPTER XIV
In Which a Signal Retards the Race
It was at six bells in the morning watch of the next day that the lookout in the top sang out the wailing cry:
“On deck!”
“Crow’s nest, ahoy!” responded Mr. Hollister, who had the deck.
“Sail-oh!”
“Where away?”
“Two points off the weather bow. Four-sticker! It’s that blessed Gullwing, by Jiminy Christmas!” responded the sharp-eyed seaman aloft.
There was as much excitement aboard the Seamew now as though this was the first time her sister ship had been spied in the offing. We ran up the shrouds to see her better, and the officers were all on deck with their glasses.
She came snorting up to us on the starboard tack, all her bright canvas bellying, and so trim and taut that it was a pleasure to gaze upon her. I felt a thrill of delight as I watched the Gullwing. Aboard of her was my chum, Thankful Polk, and my other friends, and I wished with all my heart that I might rejoin them.
But I knew very well that under the present circumstances that would be impossible. Had the two schooners been becalmed the day before, side by side, I might have got Cap’n Si to put me aboard the Gullwing.
But one thing I did beg the captain of the Seamew to do, and, after some little demur, he agreed to it. He ordered Mr. Barney to bring out the signal flags, kept in the chest amidships, and instructed him to inform Captain Bowditch that the Seamew had picked up, alive, the lost member of his crew.
This signaling was not done until the Gullwing was so near that both ships were about to tack. As soon as the line of flags was run up on the Seamew, they hustled about on the Gullwing and replied. Nor did Captain Bowditch shift his helm at once. The sister ships continued to approach each other.
The Seamew had plainly overtaken the Gullwing, and now, when she sheered off, she would begin to creep ahead of the craft in which I was the more interested. With the wind as it was, and nothing untoward occurring, the Seamew was bound to gain something over her rival in each leg she made.
“What’s he sayin’?” bawled Cap’n Si to Mr. Barney.
I had already learned something about the signal code, and when the second mate’s back was turned I got a squint at the codebook. Captain Bowditch was asking if the Seamew would heave to and send me aboard!
“Cap’n Joe is sure cracked!” cackled the commander of the Seamew. “Tell him I wouldn’t do it for a hull barrel of greening apples.”
I reckon Mr. Barney put the refusal more briefly. But the Gullwing continued to hang in the wind while another line of flags was run up to her fore. The book told me that the signal read: “I’ll send boat aboard.”
“No he won’t, by jinks!” crowed Cap’n Si. “Nor he wouldn’t wanter do it if he warn’t so blamed short-handed. Stow your flags, Mr. Barney. Stand by. Ready! haul sheet!” and he went ahead and gave swift orders to put the Seamew about on the other tack.
But I was glad that those aboard the Gullwing knew that I was alive. I could imagine Thank’s relief, and how surprised and—I hoped—glad, the others would be to know that I had not found my grave in the ocean. I even thought kindly of Bob Promise, the bully, and believed that he was likewise thinking kindly of me at that moment.
“And to serve Cap’n Si out for not being willing to meet Cap’n Joe half way, and let them take me aboard,” I muttered to myself, “I hope the Gullwing beats the Seamew all to flinders!”
The Seamew, however, gained slowly upon her sister ship. On every tack that day she made a better showing. Sometimes the Gullwing was below the horizon; but whenever we sighted her she was dropping back a bit. The wind remained steady and from a favorable quarter and by and by the night dropped down and divided the two ships more effectually than the sea itself.
As the light faded upon sea and sky we sailed under a vast, black-velvet canopy embroidered upon which were the countless stars and planets. Constellations that I knew nothing about glowed from the depths of the firmament; and brighter than all was the Southern Cross. The moon had dipped below the horizon and therefore the Cross and the stars were the more brilliant. I paced the deck alone and thought of my mother, and wondered what she was doing just then, and if Chester Downes was still trying to circumvent me, and Mr. Hounsditch, and gain control of the fortune, possession of which he so much begrudged my mother and myself.
And a thought came to me from out the stillness and immensity of that night—a thought that forever after seemed to haunt me; was there not some curse upon my grandfather’s huge property, which had been willed my mother and I under such wicked conditions? For that Grandfather Darringford’s will had been inspired by hatred of Dr. Webb, my father, one could not doubt.
Had my father not been drowned as he was off White Rock, that will of grandfather’s would have been the source of heartburnings in the family. Human nature is human nature; the time would have come when the fact that Dr. Webb was a stumbling-block to his son’s advancement, or his wife’s ease, would have been advanced. That is, if my father had remained all these years a poor man. And what else could he have been with his practice in Bolderhead?
Men get stunted in small towns—especially professional men. Dr. Webb could never have made much more than a miserably poor living for mother and I had he lived; and all that time the thought of the great Darringford Estate would have been the skeleton in our closet!
It was better as it was, I suppose. It had been a dream that my father was still alive. I believe I would have gladly given up my share of my grandfather’s money to have found that the mysterious man aboard the frozen ship was my father! I had been strangely drawn toward that man.
Besides, I felt now as though I were old enough and big enough to make my own way in the world, and to keep my mother in comfort, if not in luxury, as well.
Dawn drew near and the stars began to fade. Soon the deck would be a-bustle with our watch washing down. We had probably crossed and recrossed the way of the Gullwing during the night, but she had not been hailed from the lookout.
As the light of day advanced the wind fell. We hardly made steerage-way in the pearl-colored light of dawn. The coming day is heralded ashore by hundreds of feathered trumpeters; but here on the open sea it advances with silence.
Far, far out on the sea, where the gently swelling water seemed buttoned to the rim of the sky, a sudden flush appeared. The hue lay upon both sky and sea—indeed, it was hard to distinguish for a bit the one element from the other. But I knew the sun was about to poke his head up just there!
And as the glow grew, a ghostly figure drew across the pink patch. I watched it eagerly. The sun, mist-shrouded and sleepy, was thrust out of the sea; and across the red face of him sailed a four-stick ship—the Gullwing! It did not need the man in the crow’s nest to hail the officer of the deck and announce the fact. I could identify our sister ship from where I stood.
Long red rays like pointing fingers played across the sea. The Gullwing and the Seamew were several miles apart. The early rays of the sun touched an object on the sea—at first merely a black spot—lying about equi-distant of the two ships.
When I first saw this black thing I sprang into the shrouds. Mr. Hollister hailed me:
“What do you see, Webb?”
“Something adrift—yonder, sir!”
“Lookout, ahoy!” bawled the mate.
“Aye, aye, sir! I sees it.”
“What d’ye make it out to be?” demanded the mate.
“It’s the black hulk of an open boat,” I cried, as the seaman above hesitated. I expect the rising sun half blinded him. “There’s a stump of a mast and she seems decked over forward—no! it’s an awning.”
“A ship’s boat?” cried the mate, eagerly.
“Aye, aye, sir!” came down the voice of the man in the top. “That’s what she be. And wrecked. Not a sign of life aboard her.”
“How is it, Webb?” Mr. Hollister repeated.
“I see nothing moving,” I admitted, slowly.
Mr. Hollister sent down for his glass, and then joined me in the shrouds. The deck was all a-bustle by now. Cap’n Si came up, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
“What’s the matter with all you lubbers?” was his pleasant demand. “What’s that—the Gullwing? Ain’t you never seen her before?”
“Drop your eyes a bit, Captain,” advised Mr. Hollister, swinging down after a look through his glass.
“Huh!” exclaimed the skipper. “A boat.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Empty?”
“It looks so,” replied Mr. Hollister, and passed him the glass.
“Ain’t wuth picking up,” decided Cap’n Si, after a long look at the drifting boat.
He closed the glass. Mr. Hollister waved me down and turned to order the watch to work, when the man in the tops hailed again. He was in a better position to see into the drifting boat than anybody else.
“I see something moving in that boat, sir!”
“What do you see?” bawled Cap’n Si.
“It’s something fluttering—a flag, or a rag. There it is!”
There were light airs stirring. Suddenly something upon the broken mast moved. A flaw of wind fluttered something fastened there. Was it a signal of distress? Was some poor creature adrift in the half wrecked boat?
I wondered what Cap’n Si would do. To ignore a flag of distress—to pass by the opportunity of rescuing a fellow-creature from death—would be an awful thing. Yet there might be nobody in the boat. I could see the old man doubted.
And then the lookout hailed again:
“The Gullwing’s dropping a boat, sir!”
“That’s enough!” roared Cap’n Si, all in a bluster at once. “I won’t let Cap’n Joe do more’n me. Mr. Barney!” The second mate had followed him on deck. “Call away a boat’s crew.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” was the second mate’s smart response.
“Beat the Gullwing’s boat to that barge. Understand me? You git there first. I ain’t goin’ to let Joe Bowditch crow over me in Baltimore. Mebbe the boat’s wuth savin’ after all.”
Before he had ceased speaking Mr. Barney had shouted down the fo’castle hatchway and his watch tumbled up. I had slid down the stays to the deck and was right beside the boat Mr. Barney had elected to launch. I wanted to go in that boat, but I belonged to the mate’s watch and knew I would not be selected.