Mr. Wicker''s Window

  CHAPTER 22

  The captain, turning quickly, bellowed for all hands to come on deck.When they were assembled below him he spoke. "Men, you have followedme for many a voyage and I have always brought you safely home. Is itnot so?"

  A good-humored and enthusiastic roar of assent came from the sailors.Captain Blizzard began again.

  "What lies ahead of us in the next few hours will not make good senseto many of you. Nevertheless I ask for your instant help, and youshall see what lies at the end of my orders when we reach that time.Are you with me?"

  "AYE!" cried the sailors, their faces close together below theircaptain, and upturned to see him and catch every word. All but ZacharyHeigh, Chris noticed. Zachary remained sullen and apart, his armsfolded on his chest, taking no part in the enthusiasm of hiscompanions.

  "Well and good," roared Captain Blizzard. "I thank you. Now crowd onall the sail she will take, boys, for the _Venture_ follows hard uponus!"

  Without a word the men sprang to work, darting up the masts and outover the rigging like monkeys. Every bit of sail the _Mirabelle_possessed bellied out on the night breeze, and Chris could feel theship leap under his feet as the additional canvas caught the wind andthe graceful ship surged forward.

  Night fell before the men had finished and Chris and the Captain couldno longer see the sails of Claggett Chew's _Venture_.

  The Captain turned to Chris. "It would be my advice, lad, to go belowand sleep for a bit. You too, Amos. I shall send Ned to awaken youwhen land is sighted."

  This seemed good reasoning, and the two boys went below where theysnatched a few hours' sleep. It seemed only a minute to Chris from thetime he lay down in his hammock, knowing he was too excited to sleep,until Ned Cilley was at his side with a lantern, bringing food forAmos and himself.

  "Best eat up, lads," Ned told them, "and join the Captain, sez he tome, for land is just ahead and the Captain do be waiting you on thebridge, Chris, me lad."

  The food was bolted down in no time and Chris, feeling fresh andalert, ran up to the warm darkness of the bridge.

  To his surprise the usual lanterns were not lit; only a small shadedlight shed its rays on the compass near the wheel.

  At his questioning look Captain Blizzard muttered: "Impossible to tellhow close behind the _Venture_ may be. We have come quickly, but theyhave the faster ship. I have no wish to give them more clue thannecessary as to where we may be." He looked keenly toward the bow, hishands clasped behind his back. "Land is off the starboard quarter, andAbner Cloud is out on the bowsprit looking for the reef. We havepassed our anchorage--they expected us, or some other ship, for fireswere lit on shore. Sail has been taken in; we are going slowly andwill soon be there, by my reckoning."

  His eyes grown used to the dark, Chris now saw that it was aremarkably light night. There was no moon, but a myriad of stars gavea clear pallid sheen to the sea. Chris, looking to his left, couldmake out the blacker mass against the stars that was Tahiti. The_Mirabelle_ was close inshore, and the scent of hot sand from thebeaches, of flowers and of plants, made Chris take many deep gratefulbreaths.

  "May I go forward and be with Abner?" he asked the Captain.

  "Aye," replied that good man, for by this time Chris was as surefootedas any sailor and for the last month or more had been clamberingbarefoot in the rigging with the best of them. "Aye lad," the Captaintold him, "and hurry. Happen your eyes are sharper than Abner's. Singout when you spy the reef. We will heave to, and then God be with you,my lad, to find us out the channel to the cove!"

  Chris ran forward to the bow of the _Mirabelle_, and out along thebowsprit where, at the tip, he could see the long form of Abner Cloudstretched out at full length. They murmured a greeting and waited,eyes straining ahead.

  Then both saw the phosphorus gleam and fade, gleam and fade as thewaves broke over the coral. Eerie jade-green and white-gold, thephosphorus shone in the starlight.

  "Reef-ho!" sang out Abner, and the sound of his shout was echoed backfrom the closeness of the shore in faint dangerous mockery."_Reef-ho!_"

  "Reef-ho!" came a third time from the bridge, and then "Heave-ho!"thundered Captain Blizzard. "Drop anchor, lads!"

  Abner left his place to go back and lend a hand, and in his suddensolitude Chris grasped a rope and swung down to the water.

  A porpoise slipped away from the _Mirabelle_ and moved this way andthat to get its bearings. Then the mass of the reef to the left andthe hidden shelf of a second but obscured underwater reef to the rightmade dark patches in the phosphorescence. Far below lay the ghostlyspread of sand, and the porpoise nosed its way forward.

  The channel to the cove proved to be some five hundred yards long, andit seemed no time before the porpoise passed from the shadow of thetrees at the shore into the starlit cup of the cove. Taking a turnabout in the enjoyment of flipping its fins and giving a leap or two,the big fish then went back toward where the _Mirabelle_ hungsuspended on the glassy sea.

  A boy it was that pulled himself up hand over hand along the anchorrope and stood dripping sea water on the bridge before CaptainBlizzard.

  "I've found the channel, sir," he said, abruptly conscious of hisimportance from the admiring way in which Amos was staring at him."There's a dangerous shelf of coral that juts out on the port side--ifyou let me go first, and the men man the boats and row her in, I thinkwe shall do it safely even in this light."

  Captain Blizzard looked at him, his expression both serious andtrusting.

  "Well lad, we do what we must, and you and I understand one another.Ahoy there!" he roared down to the shadowy decks from which the blackspikes of masts rose high to break the sky. "Man the boats! We shalltow the _Mirabelle_ to cover, for there's a channel here!"

  He turned to Chris as the sound of running feet and of the boats beinghoisted overboard came loudly in the stillness of the night.

  "Now Christopher, my boy, do you go down and go over the side again,and remember what we spoke of a few hours agone!"

  The next half-hour was an exhausting one for poor Chris. It was animpossibility for him to keep for long at a time, either his own, orthe shape of the porpoise. He had to enter the water under the eyes ofthe sailors waiting with their oars poised above the sea, in theshape they knew; Christopher Mason. But once he dived under, in orderto seek out the treacherous channel in the half-light, he needed hisfish's eyes and senses. He therefore would swim a few yards as a fish,but had to surface again as himself in order to let the men see him,and call: "The length of two boats, keeping to starboard, boys. Thenease her over this way--to port."

  So it went, almost foot by foot until the _Mirabelle_ was safe insidethe cove and turned broadside to the entrance. Then, and only then,with the anchor safely dropped to the white sandy depths of thishidden harbor, did Chris, tired to his very bones, climb up the ladderand over the ship's side. There remained the camouflaging of the_Mirabelle_, for the stars were fading and before long, dawn wouldbanish secrecy.

  But Captain Blizzard and Mr. Finney awaited Chris on deck. CaptainBlizzard had his hands clasped behind his back in his habitualgesture, and as Chris stood before him swaying with fatigue, there wasa look on the Captain's face that Chris had never seen there before.The usually cheerful, joking man was grave, while Mr. Finney, so soberand forlorn as a rule, looked positively jubilant.

  "My good lad," the Captain said, "you said you could do it, but truthto tell, I doubted it from the bottom of my heart. Now that you havesucceeded where I am sure no other could have done as well, I find Ihave no words of praise good enough for ye." He looked almost tenderlyat the tired boy. "I am proud of you, Christopher. You did a man'stask with a boy's body and mind. And it took a man's spirit, too."

  Without further words the Captain of the _Mirabelle_ held out hispudgy hand to hold Chris's in a steadying grip, and Mr. Finney swungout his hand, his long face breaking into one of the rare smiles Chriswas ever to see on it.

  "Now, me boy," thundered the Captain, "do you go to your well-deservedrest. Depen
d upon it, we shall cover the ship with green until shelooks like the proverbial Christmas hall decked with boughs of holly,as the song goes!" he added chuckling. "A little later in the day youshall be called to see what you make of the result. And now, to bedwith ye both!" and he clapped Amos on the back.

  Never had his hammock seemed more like a cloud to Chris than it did onthat night, nor was sleep ever more engulfing.