Gordon Young

“ From daylight on Williams fought his way about the main deck along life-lines, helping in the three or four men who had weathered it with lashings in the rigging.
When he had helped Brundage, still erect, immobile, though weak and ready to drop, up through the steep companionway McGuire, aloft, caught sight of him and screamed:
“Jake! Didn't I tell you? When ship 'r woman goes to hell she goes—an takes all hands with her!” ”

“ Rain and spray beat blindingly. The main deck was smothered.
Again and again some man with a muffled strangling cry was torn away by the seas that swept her. Those men went out into the froth-fringed blackness like rags adrift, to be torn and broken on the rocks.
The deck-houses vanished: straw would have held as well.
Overhead sail fragments cracked and whipped about, beating on the Finn lashed at the mainmast head, on other men, clawing for life in the reeling, jerking rigging. The 'midship bulwarks tore away like wet pasteboard. The maintopmast snapped. Stays screamed.
The Mariana was gone. ”

“ Williams, hauling himself along the hawser, returned to the Mariana, and all that day he and the four men with him worked breaking out what stores they could come at. He took more care getting hammer, nails, and the ship's instruments ashore than he did with the sack of gold taken from the “treasure-chest.”
For two days they worked under a blistering sun, making a seaworthy raft. McGuire vowed he had rather have taken a board and swum to the distant island.
There was salty tinned meat and little water. But a sea-raft was made with a broad sail bent on. ”

“ You c'd blow out the flame of an archangel's sword an' break the hilt over his head. He's like that all the time, Jake. I,” McGuire added mockingly, “when I'm drunk!”
“Yes,” said Brundage slowly, catching the last phrase as he put aside his own shadowed thoughts, “you're drunk.”
“Nothin o' the kind. I'm so sober I can't sleep. What you think he's goin' to do with this ship? I know. Goin' back to Rainbow Reef with a volcano for a porch light.
“Some day more white men'll come. An missionaries. They're creepin' up. They say Williams stirs natives up to kill 'em.” ”

“ They had their heads together for nights at a time; then Ward hurried off to Honolulu and began making inquiries for two men whom nobody knew; also to make arrangements for getting together a crew that would take care of Williams and his cannibals, regarding the number and ferocity of whom the Finn had been extremely imaginative.
But Brundage and McGuire had not introduced themselves to the whaler by names used on the Mariana. They were Brundage and McGuire, and the sick Finn had not learned that. ”

“ But he's got something in him, Jake—something like a devil he's tamed. Isn't a devil. Isn't an angel either. I don't know what. Yes I do, too. Sometimes I get mad when a bush in the path, a box I can't lift, something seems to say I can't budge it—I get mad an' there's a glow like fire, an I can throw the box clear over my head. ”

“ There was no taking it to a capstan for waves broke continually over the main deck. A traveler-block with a bosun's seat attached was set on the hawser and Brundage got into it. McGuire's sarcastic advice was for him to hold his feet well up as there were likely to be sharks. Then two natives and the Finn, one by one, were brought off.
McGuire said that he wouldn't leave the bark until some stores were put ashore because he preferred to starve where the provisions were. ”

“ Brundage said something.
“Nothin' on my breath. Not a thing. An' it doesn't make any difference where I got it. Won't do you any good. All gone. You—you don't need brandy anyway. You got something in the world you hate. That keeps you warm.
“He”—a hand went vaguely toward the chart-room—“he don't need it 'cause he's got fire in him. But me, I'm just a— What's the devil goin' say to us, Jake, us three when we're all lined up each with a pitchfork-prong through his belly and the devil toyin' with the handle while he listens, waitin' for us to say something? ”

“ Ever'body else in hell'll have a good reason for bein' there. Now the devil'll say—— Oh, the steward put some in duff sauce for Mr. Butler. Tray was right under my nose when I opened the door; an I followed the steward into the pantry to grow confidential. He tried to lie to me—lie to my nose.
“An' about the devil. He's goin' say to Williams: 'McGuire'd been all right but for you, Hurricane. Brundage too. Brundage was a good old sinner till he got old, dried up an' took to readin' the Bible. ”

“ I hate the damn things. Sneak in on a fellow when he's asleep. Jake, what's the devil goin' say to you an' me an' him——”
A long arm went out. A hand closed on McGuire's shoulder, jerking him around, while Brundage bent slightly toward his face. Then in silence Brundage shoved him away, letting him fall against the rail.
“I'm not drunk,” McGuire protested against the unvoiced accusation. Williams had put all the liquor under a lock. “I'm not. Had a dream, I tell you. You got imagination.” ”

“ Not much to catch hold of, but it's pulled like a great mouth sucking, an' something, I don' know what, breaks loose inside o' me an' for a minute or two I c'd swim through ice, solid ice!
“Ever'thing gives way when you're in that mood. Nothing—nothing can touch you, hurt you, hold you, stop you. ”

“ Cure anything. But he—he goes naked as a cannibal to punish himself for rememberin' the man that used to be—what the devil was his name? Anyway they hanged him at Sydney an' convicts saved him somehow. ”