CHAPTER VII
THE TYPHOON
THE storm that struck the Halfmoon took her entirely
unaware. It had sprung, apparently, out of a perfectly clear sky.
Both the lookout and the man at the wheel were ready to take
oath that they had scanned the horizon not a half-minute
before Second Mate Theriere had come racing forward bellowing
for all hands on deck and ordering a sailor below to
report the menacing conditions to Captain Simms.
Before that officer reached the deck Theriere had the entire
crew aloft taking in sail; but though they worked with the
desperation of doomed men they were only partially successful
in their efforts.
The sky and sea had assumed a sickly yellowish color,
except for the mighty black cloud that raced toward them, low
over the water. The low moaning sound that had followed the
first appearance of the storm, gave place to a sullen roar, and
then, of a sudden, the thing struck the Halfmoon, ripping her
remaining canvas from her as if it had been wrought from tissue
paper, and with the flying canvas, spars, and cordage went
the mainmast, snapping ten feet above the deck, and crashing
over the starboard bow with a noise and jar that rose above
the bellowing of the typhoon.
Fully half the crew of the Halfmoon either went down with
the falling rigging or were crushed by the crashing weight of
the mast as it hurtled against the deck. Skipper Simms rushed
back and forth screaming out curses that no one heeded, and
orders that there was none to fill.
Theriere, on his own responsibility, looked to the hatches.
Ward with a handful of men armed with axes attempted to
chop away the wreckage, for the jagged butt of the fallen
mast was dashing against the ship's side with such vicious
blows that it seemed but a matter of seconds ere it would
stave a hole in her.
With the utmost difficulty a sea anchor was rigged and
tumbled over the Halfmoon's pitching bow into the angry sea,
that was rising to more gigantic proportions with each succeeding
minute. This frail makeshift which at best could but
keep the vessel's bow into the wind, saving her from instant
engulfment in the sea's trough, seemed to Theriere but a sorry
means of prolonging the agony of suspense preceding the
inevitable end. That nothing could save them was the second
officer's firm belief, nor was he alone in his conviction. Not
only Simms and Ward, but every experienced sailor on the
ship felt that the life of the Halfmoon was now but a matter
of hours, possibly minutes, while those of lesser experience
were equally positive that each succeeding wave must mark
the termination of the lives of the vessel and her company.
The deck, washed now almost continuously by hurtling
tons of storm-mad water, as one mountainous wave followed
another the length of the ship, had become entirely impossible.
With difficulty the men were attempting to get below between
waves. All semblance of discipline had vanished. For the most
part they were a pack of howling, cursing, terror-ridden
beasts, fighting at the hatches with those who would have held
them closed against the danger of each new assault of the sea.
Ward and Skipper Simms had been among the first to seek
the precarious safety below deck. Theriere alone of the officers
had remained on duty until the last, and now he was exerting
his every faculty in the effort to save as many of the men as
possible without losing the ship in the doing of it. Only
between waves was the entrance to the main cabins negotiable,
while the forecastle hatch had been abandoned entirely after it
had with difficulty been replaced following the retreat of three
of the crew to that part of the ship.
The mucker stood beside Theriere as the latter beat back
the men when the seas threatened. It was the man's first
experience of the kind. Never had he faced death in the
courage-blighting form which the grim harvester assumes when
he calls unbridled Nature to do his ghastly bidding. The
mucker saw the rough, brawling bullies of the forecastle
reduced to white-faced, gibbering cowards, clawing and fighting
to climb over one another toward the lesser danger of the
cabins, while the mate fought them off, except as he found it
expedient to let them pass him; he alone cool and fearless.
Byrne stood as one apart from the dangers and hysteric
strivings of his fellows. Once when Theriere happened to glance
in his direction the Frenchman mentally ascribed the mucker's
seeming lethargy to the paralysis of abject cowardice. "The
fellow is in a blue funk," thought the second mate; "I did not
misjudge him--like all his kind he is a coward at heart."
Then a great wave came, following unexpectedly close upon
the heels of a lesser one. It took Theriere off his guard, threw
him down and hurtled him roughly across the deck, landing
him in the scuppers, bleeding and stunned. The next wave
would carry him overboard.
Released from surveillance the balance of the crew pushed
and fought their way into the cabin--only the mucker remained
without, staring first at the prostrate form of the mate
and then at the open cabin hatch. Had one been watching
him he might reasonably have thought that the man's mind
was in a muddle of confused thoughts and fears; but such was
far from the case. Billy was waiting to see if the mate would
revive sufficiently to return across the deck before the next
wave swept the ship. It was very interesting--he wondered
what odds O'Leary would have laid against the man.
In another moment the wave would come. Billy glanced at
the open cabin hatch. That would never do--the cabin would
be flooded with tons of water should the next wave find the
hatch still open. Billy closed it. Then he looked again toward
Theriere. The man was just recovering consciousness--and the
wave was coming.
Something stirred within Billy Byrne. It gripped him and
made him act quickly as though by instinct to do something
that no one, Billy himself least of all, would have suspected
that the Grand Avenue mucker would have been capable of.
Across the deck Theriere was dragging himself painfully to
his hands and knees, as though to attempt the impossible feat
of crawling back to the cabin hatch. The wave was almost
upon Billy. In a moment it would engulf him, and then rush
on across him to tear Theriere from the deck and hurl him
beyond the ship into the tumbling, watery, chaos of the sea.
The mucker saw all this, and in the instant he launched
himself toward the man for whom he had no use, whose kind
he hated, reaching him as the great wave broke over them,
crushing them to the deck, choking and blinding them.
For a moment they were buried in the swirling maelstrom,
and then as the Halfmoon rose again, shaking the watery
enemy from her back, the two men were disclosed--Theriere
half over the ship's side--the mucker clinging to him with one
hand, the other clutching desperately at a huge cleat upon the
gunwale.
Byrne dragged the mate to the deck, and then slowly and
with infinite difficulty across it to the cabin hatch. Through it
he pushed the man, tumbling after him and closing the aperture
just as another wave swept the Halfmoon.
Theriere was conscious and but little the worse for his
experience, though badly bruised. He looked at the mucker in
astonishment as the two faced each other in the cabin.
"I don't know why you did it," said Theriere.
"Neither do I," replied Billy Byrne.
"I shall not forget it, Byrne," said the officer.
"Yeh'd better," answered Billy, turning away.
The mucker was extremely puzzled to account for his act.
He did not look upon it at all as a piece of heroism; but
rather as a "fool play" which he should be ashamed of. The
very idea! Saving the life of a gink who, despite his brutal
ways, belonged to the much-despised "highbrow" class. Billy
was peeved with himself.
Theriere, for his part, was surprised at the unexpected
heroism of the man he had long since rated as a cowardly
bully. He was fully determined to repay Byrne in so far as he
could the great debt he owed him. All thoughts of revenge for
the mucker's former assault upon him were dropped, and he
now looked upon the man as a true friend and ally.
For three days the Halfmoon plunged helplessly upon the
storm-wracked surface of the mad sea. No soul aboard her
entertained more than the faintest glimmer of a hope that the
ship would ride out the storm; but during the third night the
wind died down, and by morning the sea had fallen sufficiently
to make it safe for the men of the Halfmoon to venture
upon deck.
There they found the brigantine clean-swept from stem to
stern. To the north of them was land at a league or two,
perhaps. Had the storm continued during the night they
would have been dashed upon the coast. God-fearing men
would have given thanks for their miraculous rescue; but not
so these. Instead, the fear of death removed, they assumed
their former bravado.
Skipper Simms boasted of the seamanship that had saved
the Halfmoon--his own seamanship of course. Ward was
cursing the luck that had disabled the ship at so crucial a
period of her adventure, and revolving in his evil mind various
possible schemes for turning the misfortune to his own advantage.
Billy Byrne, sitting upon the corner of the galley table,
hobnobbed with Blanco. These choice representatives of the
ship's company were planning a raid on the skipper's brandy
chest during the disembarkation which the sight of land had
rendered not improbable.
The Halfmoon, with the wind down, wallowed heavily in
the trough of the sea, but even so Barbara Harding, wearied
with days of confinement in her stuffy cabin below, ventured
above deck for a breath of sweet, clean air.
Scarce had she emerged from below than Theriere espied
her, and hastened to her side.
"Well, Miss Harding," he exclaimed, "it seems good to see
you on deck again. I can't tell you how sorry I have felt for
you cooped up alone in your cabin without a single woman
for companionship, and all those frightful days of danger, for
there was scarce one of us that thought the old hooker would
weather so long and hard a blow. We were mighty fortunate
to come through it so handily."
"Handily?" queried Barbara Harding, with a wry smile,
glancing about the deck of the Halfmoon. "I cannot see that
we are either through it handily or through it at all. We have
no masts, no canvas, no boats; and though I am not much of
a sailor, I can see that there is little likelihood of our effecting
a landing on the shore ahead either with or without boats---it
looks most forbidding. Then the wind has gone down, and
when it comes up again it is possible that it will carry us away
from the land, or if it takes us toward it, dash us to pieces at
the foot of those frightful cliffs."
"I see you are too good a sailor by far to be cheered by
any questionable hopes," laughed Theriere; "but you must
take the will into consideration--I only wished to give you a
ray of hope that might lighten your burden of apprehension.
However, honestly, I do think that we may find a way to
make a safe landing if the sea continues to go down as it has
in the past two hours. We are not more than a league from
shore, and with the jury mast and sail that the men are setting
under Mr. Ward now we can work in comparative safety
with a light breeze, which we should have during the afternoon.
There are few coasts, however rugged they may appear
at a distance, that do not offer some foothold for the wrecked
mariner, and I doubt not but that we shall find this no
exception to the rule."
"I hope you are right, Mr. Theriere," said the girl, "and yet
I cannot but feel that my position will be less safe on land
than it has been upon the Halfmoon. Once free from the
restraints of discipline which tradition, custom, and law
enforce upon the high seas there is no telling what atrocities
these men will commit. To be quite candid, Mr. Theriere, I
dread a landing worse than I dreaded the dangers of the
storm through which we have just passed."
"I think you have little to fear on that score, Miss Harding,"
said the Frenchman. "I intend making it quite plain
that I consider myself your protector once we have left the
Halfmoon, and I can count on several of the men to support
me. Even Mr. Divine will not dare do otherwise. Then we can
set up a camp of our own apart from Skipper Simms and his
faction where you will be constantly guarded until succor may
be obtained."
Barbara Harding had been watching the man's face as he
spoke. The memory of his consideration and respectful treatment
of her during the trying weeks of her captivity had done
much to erase the intuitive feeling of distrust that had tinged
her thoughts of him earlier in their acquaintance, while his
heroic act in descending into the forecastle in the face of the
armed and desperate Byrne had thrown a glamour of romance
about him that could not help but tend to fascinate a girl of
Barbara Harding's type. Then there was the look she had seen
in his eyes for a brief instant when she had found herself
locked in his cabin on the occasion that he had revealed to
her Larry Divine's duplicity. That expression no red-blooded
girl could mistake, and the fact that he had subdued his
passion spoke eloquently to the girl of the fineness and chivalry
of his nature, so now it was with a feeling of utter
trustfulness that she gladly gave herself into the keeping of
Henri Theriere, Count de Cadenet, Second Officer of the
Halfmoon.
"O Mr. Theriere," she cried, "if you only can but arrange it
so, how relieved and almost happy I shall be. How can I ever
repay you for all that you have done for me?"
Again she saw the light leap to the man's eyes--the light of
a love that would not be denied much longer other than
through the agency of a mighty will. Love she thought it; but
the eye-light of love and lust are twin lights between which it
takes much worldly wisdom to differentiate, and Barbara
Harding was not worldly-wise in the ways of sin.
"Miss Harding," said Theriere, in a voice that he evidently
found it difficult to control, "do not ask me now how you
may repay me; I--;" but what he would have said he
checked, and with an effort of will that was almost appreciable
to the eye he took a fresh grip upon himself, and continued:
"I am amply repaid by being able to serve you, and thus
to retrieve myself in your estimation--I know that you have
doubted me; that you have questioned the integrity of my acts
that helped to lead up to the unfortunate affair of the Lotus.
When you tell me that you no longer doubt--that you accept
me as the friend I would wish to be, I shall be more than
amply repaid for anything which it may have been my good
fortune to have been able to accomplish for your comfort and
safety."
"Then I may partially repay you at once," exclaimed the
girl with a smile, "for I can assure you that you possess my
friendship to the fullest, and with it, of course, my entire
confidence. It is true that I doubted you at first--I doubted
everyone connected with the Halfmoon. Why shouldn't I? But
now I think that I am able to draw a very clear line between
my friends and my enemies. There is but one upon the right
side of that line--you, my friend," and with an impulsive little
gesture Barbara Harding extended her hand to Theriere.
It was with almost a sheepish expression that the Frenchman
took the proffered fingers, for there had been that in the
frank avowal of confidence and friendship which smote upon
a chord of honor in the man's soul that had not vibrated in
response to a chivalrous impulse for so many long years that
it had near atrophied from disuse.
Then, of a sudden, the second officer of the Halfmoon
straightened to his full height. His head went high, and he
took the small hand of the girl in his own strong, brown one.
"Miss Harding," he said, "I have led a hard, bitter life. I
have not always done those things of which I might be most
proud: but there have been times when I have remembered
that I am the grandson of one of Napoleon's greatest field
marshals, and that I bear a name that has been honored by a
mighty nation. What you have just said to me recalls these
facts most vividly to my mind--I hope, Miss Harding, that
you will never regret having spoken them," and to the bottom
of his heart the man meant what he said, at the moment; for
inherent chivalry is as difficult to suppress or uproot as is
inherent viciousness.
The girl let her hand rest in his for a moment, and as their
eyes met she saw in his a truth and honesty and cleanness
which revealed what Theriere might have been had Fate
ordained his young manhood to different channels. And in
that moment a question sprang, all unbidden and unforeseen
to her mind; a question which caused her to withdraw her
hand quickly from his, and which sent a slow crimson to her
cheek.
Billy Byrne, slouching by, cast a bitter look of hatred upon
the two. The fact that he had saved Theriere's life had not
increased his love for that gentleman. He was still much
puzzled to account for the strange idiocy that had prompted
him to that act; and two of his fellows had felt the weight of
his mighty fist when they had spoken words of rough praise
for his heroism--Billy had thought that they were kidding
him.
To Billy the knocking out of Theriere, and the subsequent
kick which he had planted in the unconscious man's face,
were true indications of manliness. He gauged such matters by
standards purely Grand Avenuesque and now it enraged him
to see that the girl before whose very eyes he had demonstrated
his superiority over Theriere should so look with
favor upon the officer.
It did not occur to Billy that he would care to have the girl
look with favor upon him. Such a thought would have sent
him into a berserker rage; but the fact remained that Billy felt
a strong desire to cut out Theriere's heart when he saw him
now in close converse with Barbara Harding--just why he felt
so Billy could not have said. The truth of the matter is that
Billy was far from introspective; in fact he did very little
thinking. His mind had never been trained to it, as his muscles
had been trained to fighting. Billy reacted more quickly to
instinct than to the processes of reasoning, and on this account
it was difficult for him to explain any great number of
his acts or moods--it is to be doubted, however, that Billy
Byrne had ever attempted to get at the bottom of his soul, if
he possessed one.
Be that as it may, had Theriere known it he was very near
death that moment when a summons from Skipper Simms
called him aft and saved his life. Then the mucker, unseen by
the officer, approached the girl. In his heart were rage and
hatred, and as the girl turned at the sound of his step behind
her she saw them mirrored in his dark, scowling face.
