XVII

The port-light was a grey round, and the lamp had paled. When Colet noticed that, he wondered how it had come about. He peered out from the port. He could see nothing but wan panic, and a long loose end of rope resting straight on the wind as rigid as an iron bar. This was called day. The deck looked as though no man had been on it for years; but Sinclair came into view, leaning and pulling up against the drive of morning. Coming to him? Colet got at the door to be ready for him. It felt as if it weighed tons. It fought.

“Fuh, Colet,” he breathed. “You’re not overside, eh?”

He tore his sou’wester off. His hot hair was extinguished and flattened.

“What a night.”

Sinclair’s appearance was almost that of a stranger. His face was bleached and seamed, his eyes were raw. They blinked sorely as he grinned. He plumped on to the couch and leaned back.

“She has had a time. Two boats look as if elephants had sat in them. The old man was right after all.”

The grin remained on his face. He had forgotten to take it off. He was grinning at the window.

“Look at that rope. Hell. Look at it.”

“Is Hale all right?”

“Eh? Yes, he’s still up there.”

Sinclair was regarding now in childish wonder a wound on his hand. “How did that come?” He dismissed his hand.

“The old man? Yes. Well, this ship’s got a master. Colet, the old man’s all right, if anyone wants to know.”

“How is it now?”

“Don’t ask. She’s taking it easier, though. Sitting in it like a duck. Shouldn’t have thought it possible, but the old man was sure she would. Been rolling her bridge-ends under, too. Glad to see daylight.”

Sinclair shut his eyes.

“I say, I think I’ll take my ten minutes here. Handy, here.”

He sought Colet again, with a grin.

“Nice job for this child presently, when it moderates. Coming with us? The rudder’s broken at the couplings. You know that? Must get her under control. There’s a boat to be got out. Wires from the steering chains to the rudder. That sort of thing. Fix it up. You’d better make for the bridge-house now, the old man says. Tell him where I am, won’t you?”

The chief officer’s head fell sideways; this time he was certainly asleep.

The purser adventured for the bridge-house. If you checked yourself from point to point, hand over hand, you were not hurled along. The wind was solid. The purser did not look at the seas, but some heights caught his eye as they fled past. They were aged. It was better not to look at them. Hale turned his head as Colet entered. He grimaced at him humorously. Was the old man enjoying it? A seaman was still at the useless wheel, as if apart, and in a trance, looking to futurity through the glass, and waiting. His jaws moved slightly, now and then, but that was all. Nobody else was there.

“Did you sleep, Colet? No sleep till morn, eh? Well, I think it moderates a bit. We shall be busy, soon. I want you with me in case. The lads are taking a rest now.”

The master resumed his vigil. His head was turned to the world beyond. But that world had contracted. One could not see far, but the intimidated eye could see all that it wanted. The sky had closed down on them, and they were circumscribed by a sunless incertitude. In that grey vacancy shadows appeared which were too high to be of water, but those ghosts darkened and emerged as seas which saw the ship at once and came at her in towering velocity. As they shaped, each of them threatened that it was the one which would finish her, but the Altair heaved into the sky out of it in time. Yet another was always coming when one had gone. The desolate head of the ship, condemned to dreary unrest, streamed with gauzes of water. Its stanchions and rails were awry and tortured. A length of the bulwarks of the foredeck was ruptured and projected outwards raggedly. The deck ventilators had gone. One lay in the scuppers as if dead, but sometimes turned over and then back in a spasm of unexpected life.

That slight figure of the master, standing in profile, so watchful of vague and immense powers, and so undisturbed by their onrush, was like a token of quiet faith untouched by calamity and overthrow. There it was. He was looking it in the face. He did not move. He was timing the Indian Ocean, that little man. Colet felt he would as soon be there as elsewhere. Who did Hale remind him of as he stood like that? Somebody. Somebody in a dream? No, good Lord, he was like that dim figure of an old man when coming up Gallions Reach in an evening long ago; standing just like that, and muttering something of other worlds. Beyond the captain Colet saw a dire spectre loom and bear down on them, an immense sea, its pale head raving with speed and fury. Other worlds! This one? Colet could not help swallowing on a choking laugh. At that Hale turned on him quickly, and knew what the purser had seen.

“Laughing at it? They do look fairly terrifying, some of them.”

The two men had made that signal to each other. Colet lightened, flippantly elate. Chanticleer crowing at spectres, sure of the morning? The steward pranced in with a can of hot coffee and some food. Wonderful fellow. How had he managed all that from the galley? He had saved the grub, but he was like a cat out of a ditch. Coffee was good. Calamity could not even blow off the fragrance of coffee. Stewards could dance through it, carrying coffee.

The three men in that bridge-house had no more to say to each other. They stumbled, made abrupt movements to steady themselves, kept their eyes on the world without. Hour after hour of onset and uplift; screens of white which keened and hid the ship, and passed; vaulting masses which strode over the bows; occasional gusts which careened her, held her over, and hid the sea with wool.

But it was lessening? The worse of it seemed to have gone. One could see farther. The ceiling had lifted. Hale was lighting his pipe when the engine-room signalled. The master listened at the black cup of the speaking-tube, and then put his mouth to it. His mouth and ear dodged about.

“No⁠ ⁠… not yet⁠ ⁠… we shall try soon⁠ ⁠… let you know⁠ ⁠… thank your men for me, Gillespie⁠ ⁠… not over yet, though⁠ ⁠… who?⁠ ⁠… badly?⁠ ⁠… where is he?⁠ ⁠… all right.⁠ ⁠… I’ll do what I can⁠ ⁠… let you know.”

“One of the greasers, Colet. Flung into the gear. Very nasty. He must stay there. We dare not bring him up yet.”

He walked up and down the enclosure for a spell. He paused, and contemplated the outer world.

“We might,” he said to himself. “Colet, would you tell Sinclair I want him?”

A bunch of the people of the ship presently dared the open. They appeared together in haste, as if they had suddenly agreed to submit no longer. They had come out to rebel. But how could they fight that? They were seen at once and attacked. They were expunged. When the cataract had gone they were still all there, hurried and desperate. They were minikin in a precarious wild, in a light as hopeless as nullity, their foothold a bare raft of disappearing iron. They could not do it. But they were hauling gear about, refractory stuff in league with the enemy, in an obsession that wires would bind cyclones. Sinclair was there. It was a losing game but he was playing it. His arm was flung out directing; he toppled over, but his arm continued pointing at the crisis from the deck⁠—no time to get up⁠—and his mouth was open, bawling, though he seemed to make no sound. It was a shadow show. A play of midgets who endeavoured with foolish efforts to frustrate the fate imposed on them by majesty. Well done, Sinclair. Nearly had you then.

They made for a boat as if they meant to use it. That ought to be stopped. That was carrying matters too far. They could not leave the ship. But the boat was manned and swung out⁠—Sinclair, the third officer, the boatswain, and a seaman, were leaving them. They were determined about it. They were hanging outboard now, uncertain in a threatening void; their adversary was waiting for them below. Sometimes it swept along the topside of the ship, and then retired, for its next leap, to a sudden deep below the ship’s wall. For a torturing moment the suspensory boat fell straight to disaster. It checked. It shot up on a roller, afloat. Colet was looking in astonishment straight at the faces of its men. The snoring ship heeled away from them. The boat dropped into a hollow. She sped to a crest higher than the funnel, and was poised for a moment on the foaming summit; she was lost. The seas opened, and she was seen close astern, askew on a slope.

When Colet next saw Sinclair that officer was climbing the ladder amidships, as happy and unexpected a token as an angelic visitor. The purser put his arm round his friend’s shoulder.

“All right. Done it, Colet.”

She was steering again.

“See that out there?” Sinclair thrust out his arm.

Something was to be seen in the murk. What was it? Smoke?

“Yes. It’s a liner. She’ll be passing us in an hour.”

Colet went to his room in gratitude. He felt as though the sky had gone up to its friendly height. They were let off. They were getting out of it. The violence meant nothing now. His cabin seemed larger, more intimate. He was comforted by even the society of distant but brotherly smoke. They were not alone, either. He was thinking he would go out presently to watch their neighbour pass them when Sinclair entered, and something about Sinclair made him rise as though this were an important meeting.

“The liner’s almost abeam. Go up with the old man, Colet. He’s going to signal her. There’s something not right⁠—Gillespie says the furnace footplates are awash. That and our steering-gear together⁠ ⁠… he wants a tow, I expect. I’m going below now to find what I can.”

There was light enough to see the signals of the stranger. It was impossible for Colet to make out what was passing between the two ships. The tumbling of their wounded steamer was accentuated, it was sickening, when things were happening, and you did not know what.

“Did you make out her last signal, Lycett?” asked the captain.

“Yes, sir, distinctly. He says he cannot tow. Got the mails. He asks whether you will abandon.”

“No. Signal, no.”