Chapter XIII · GENUINE NERVE.

There’s a sensation akin to pain in the midriff when a mast goes by the board. It is bad enough when actual stress of heavy weather brings that sickening, crunching crackle. But this thing was positive wantonness; this setting of extra canvas to a whipping “frother,” new canvas, at that, and without even the precaution of a single “preventer!” Old sails would have saved the sticks.

In that first instant of terror, the girl instinctively clutched me, and I held her fast a moment in my happiness before I assured her:

“There’s not a bit of danger! It’s just a mess, that’s all!”

And it certainly was a mess!

The schooner wallowed in the trough of the quick sea that had followed the squall’s first fury, the sorriest mass of confusion imaginable. It was a positive sin.

The masts, still hanging to the shrouds which hadn’t all parted, thumped their menace against the planking of the side; the main boom, still fast to its sheet, ground at the mahogany rail as it sawed between goose-neck and traveler.

The canvas, mountains of it, flapped, rolled, and puffed frantically, a matted mass of cordage to leeward, wire stays of stiff crinkle, turnbuckles, spreaders, and blocks.

It was a time that called for quick action.

And quick action it got. I never saw greater promptness. Stroth was fairly beside himself, and his emotion was—joy!

“Oho!” he bellowed, in positive happiness, the very instant we righted to an even keel, “here we have it now—and something like!”

Then he was all over the boat, roaring orders in a tone of voice of which I never would have believed him capable.

And, quick to the inspiration of that personality, the men jumped to the task of clearing away.

“Toss me that ax!” cried the owner to old Steve, and he himself went at a steel stay that held a spar from moving.

“Tie first, then cut!” He had a sharp way with him that made you start an instant before you sprang to the task. I felt the impulse of it, though my place was certainly to soothe the girl. Then he caught a look at me over his shoulder, and shouted:

“Take her below, Grey, to her cabin. I’ll need you in five minutes. And, mind you, look sharp!”

I know when to obey a man—and silently.

The girl still clung to me, but her terror came not so much from the vessel’s condition as it sprang from consternation at the remarkable change in her father.

But she didn’t say a word except to thank me when I left her at her stateroom door.

“I’m all right now, Mr. Grey,” she said quietly, though the haunt of some indefinite fear still showed in those wonderful eyes of hers. “You’d better get back to deck. He may need you.”

And the way she said that pronoun told where the trouble lay.

Even in the short interval I had been below deck, the weather had taken on a change for the better. A quick squall is almost always a short one, bearing out the old adage: “Short warning, soon past.”

But, though the wind had fallen, we again faced that clammy nuisance, fog. For, as though it had but lifted to give us the warning Stroth did not heed, the mist once more settled its gloomy mantle over us—almost in disgust, I was pleased to fancy.

The vessel still was rolling to the trough, but a certain sort of order was beginning to show out of the chaos of the minutes preceding.

Stroth caught sight of me, and cried:

“Come, lend a hand here, Grey! Every pound counts at this!”

A quick glance about told me the scheme—a scheme which had come to him the very instant of the crash. All the hampering rigging had been cut away, and the spars, secured to lines, now floated aft, a tangled mass.

“On deck with it, you see!” he exclaimed heartily, as he looked over his men that stood about him. And from that instant I realized that they were really his men.

There was a spirit in their way of jumping to his bark, a sprightliness of real zest, a vim that told its own story of master and crew. They loved him as much as they feared him. It’s a good combination aboard ship.

And Stevens? He was one of the crew now; though I still read great worry in his face.

And it was to old-fashioned “yo-ho-ing” that we fairly sang the spars over the taffrail onto deck; the mainmast to starboard, the foremast to port. A tackle rigged to the bitts had done the trick.

When everything was lashed fast, Stroth motioned Stevens to the position at the wheel. Excitement, the joy of it, still lighted his eye.

Then, with a “Come on, Grey!” he strode forward, and disappeared before me through a midship hatch. I followed down an iron ladder, and found myself in the engine room, where old Steve had already preceded us.

“Located the trouble?” demanded Stroth.

“Yaas, sir!” grunted the old bo’s’n. “But it’s wuss’n I thought fust. Shaft’s bent.”

“You’re something of a doctor in this sort of thing, Grey?” It was more assertion than query. At least, he didn’t wait for an answer before adding:

“Old Steve’ll show you the tools, and I needn’t say that the quicker we get way on the schooner, the better.

“Meanwhile,” he went on, and his tone varied not a whit from its evenness, “I guess I’d better take a minute now getting this flipper back into commission.”

He withdrew his left hand from his jacket pocket, where it had been hidden, and I believe that that incident told me more of Carl Stroth than I ever could have learned otherwise.

“You see,” he explained simply, “one of the lads, in his eagerness to cut adrift a while back, missed his aim a trifle.”

He unbound a tight-wrapped handkerchief. It was a nasty cut to look at, for the blade had found the fleshy part of the palm between wrist and little finger. The cut was clear to the bone.

“Good heavens, Mr. Stroth!” I cried. “You’d better wash that clean immediately. Have you any peroxide of——”

His answer was a clear laugh, genuine and boyish. Then he mounted the ladder with the agility of an acrobat. One hand to the rungs is no light feat in itself.

TO BE CONTINUED.