CHAPTER XXXIII
MAINSAIL HAUL
That night Raft and the girl took it in turns again to keep watch ondeck. They might just as well have gone below for all the trouble thecrew could have given them. These gentry had fought bitterly becausethey had been attacked. Raft had frightened them. There is a form ofbravery which one might liken to inverted terror. Rats shew it when theyare cornered, and so do men. They had seen their boss killed with a blowand the destroyer hurling himself on them and, though they werepeaceable men, they fought. These same peaceable men, be it understood,would, all the same, have murdered a human being for profit could theyhave done so with reasonable safety.
When the girl came on deck in the morning, after her watch below, shefound the deck busy and Raft with his hands in his pockets leaningagainst the port bulwarks and watching the busy ones.
"They're in a thundering hurry to get out," said Raft. "That chap,"pointing to a "chink" that seemed a cut above the others and wasevidently the mate, "has been pointing to the sky and out there beyondthe bay. They seem to smell bad weather coming. I nodded my head to himand he's working the hands now for all they're worth."
"The wind is blowing from the land," said the girl.
"Yes," said Raft, "it'll take us out without towing, unless it changes."
The hatch cover had been put on and the boat brought to the davits, someof the crew were up aloft scrambling about like monkeys, others weremaking ready to haul on the halyards and a fellow was unlashing thewheel. There was not a face in all the crowd that did not bear thesignature of Anxiety writ on parchment.
The fear of weather, the fear of Kerguelen, and the fear of that bay,which was evidently haunted by evil spirits, drove them like a whip.
The mainsail was set to a chorus like the crying of sea fowl and theforesail and jib. The tide coming in held the barque to a taut anchorchain with her stern to the beach and the wind ready to take her. Themate was at the wheel and now from forward ought to have come the soundof the windlass pawls and the rasp of the rising anchor chain. Itdidn't. From the group of Chinese collected there came, instead, a clangfollowed by a splash.
"Why, the beggars have knocked the shackle off the chain," cried Raft."Lord bless _my_ soul, never waited to raise the mud hook?"
"Does it matter?" she asked.
"Sure to have a spare one," answered he, "but it gets me, that's Chineeall over, they're rattled."
"Look!" she cried, "we're moving!"
The cliff's were beginning to glide landward and the bay's mouth towiden, sea-gulls flew with them screaming a challenge, and theguillemots lining the cliff ledges broke into voice, echoes andguillemots storming at them as they went.
Then the sea opened wide under the grey breezy day and the great islandsshewed themselves away to the east. To the west and the north all wasclear water.
Raft and the girl walked to the after-rail and looked at the coast theywere leaving; it seemed horribly near and the great black cliffs only agunshot away. If the infernal wind of Kerguelen were to arise and blowfrom the north even now they might be seized and dashed back on thoserocks, but the south-east wind held steady and the cliffs drew away andthe coast lengthened and new cliffs and bays disclosed themselves, tillthey almost fancied they could see, away to the east, the great sealbeach where the remains of the dead man lay in the cave and where thegreat sea-bulls were without doubt taking their ease on the rocks.
And now came the last call of Kerguelen, the voice of the kittiwakes:
"Get-away--get-away--get-away."
Raft, as they stood and watched, put his arm over the shoulder of thegirl and as she held the great hand that had saved her and brought herso far towards safety her mind, miles away, kept travelling the longroad from the caves.
"I'm thinking of the bundle and all the poor things in it," said she,"it will lie there forever on the beach, waiting to be picked up--it'sstrange."
"I was thinkin' the same thing myself," said Raft, "and the old harpoonI licked that chap across the head with."