"When was your last watch, Mike?"

"This afternoon, sor."

"When did Greer stand watch?"

"He's niver told anywan, sor; I think it must be a saycret."

"Get to your cabin and turn in," directed Madden. "I'll take it myself till midnight, eight bells. Then send Greer."

Hogan saluted in the darkness and turned about for his cabin. Madden began a careful journey aft toward the wheel.

He fought his way to the ladder and climbed up into the night, sometimes clinging like a fly to the underside of the reeling wall, sometimes going up a steep slant. Gusts of spume and foam whipped him all the way up. Once on top of the wall, he clung to the inside rail and began pulling himself carefully around toward the rear bridge. At this height the full force of the wind almost tore him from his reeling anchorage.

At last he turned onto the bridge and moved toward the binnacle light.

"You'll find 'er a little 'ard, sir," remarked the steersman as he turned over the wheel to Madden. "Good night, sir."

"Good night," returned the American, and he watched the fellow's form disappear in the darkness.

Madden gripped the spokes of the wheel and fell to watching the signal light in the center of the forward bridge and the stern lantern of the distant tug. These two plunging spots in the black void of night he must keep aligned.

The enormous dock leaped and shivered under his feet. Huge waves roared by, of such vastness that Madden could hear their crests crashing and thundering high above the level of the bridge. These moving mountains shook tons of black water into dim, ghostlike spray, and sent it hissing down into cavernous troughs. The weight of the wind-swept spume flashing out of darkness through the binnacle light almost took the boy off his feet. It pounded his oilskin, stung his face. The enormous iron dock groaned and clanged under the mad bastinado. The long arms of the shoring stanchions smote the walls in a kind of terrific anvil chorus to the blaring orchestra of the tempest. The joints of the three huge pontoons sounded as if they were being rent asunder every moment. One minute the great structure would rise dizzily, high into the black blast, a skyscraper flung up on a mountain Madden could look far below on the lights of the struggling _Vulcan_. Up there the storm yelled and screamed at every corner and brace of the weltering dock, and wrenched at the midget helmsman. Then came the sickening drop, down, down, down, into the profound, and the _Vulcan_ would swing far above her towering consort. For the instant the storm would be blanketed by the prodigious waves. Wild, formless ghosts of foam would stretch wide arms about the falling dock as if they were clasping it into the lowest crypts of the dead, and the night would be filled with a vast and dreadful whispering.

For hours it seemed that every ascent, every descent, must mark the end.

But the storm was so terrific, Madden's sense of personal fear was blotted out in the tremendous conflict about him. Indeed, there was something deeply moving, almost gratifying in this elemental rage. Then he discovered that he was taking a part in it. Mechanically he had been straining and pulling at the wheel to hold those signal lights in line.

Now he realized that his tiny human force formed a third contender in this vast battle. As he eased the great dock down the rushing sheer of a wave so the shock would not break the straining cable, he had won a point over two violent antagonists. His puny arm, that could raise perhaps two hundred pounds, was lifted against enemies that could fling about billions of tons. Without his force, tug and dock would part company instantly. Each watery mountain that he climbed, each gulf that he fathomed, was a victory over infinite odds.

However, if the man worked with subtlety, the sea likewise worked with subtlety. As the long hours of Madden's watch roared by, one thing was borne in on the youth: the rudder gradually was becoming harder to manage. Madden thought this was caused by the rising storm and strained more rigidly against the wheel.

Then, in the latter part of his vigil, an odd thing happened. A blast of spray struck Madden with some slimy thing that whipped about his neck and chest and almost tore him from the wheel. With convulsive repugnance, he jerked it loose and held the clammy stuff toward the binnacle light. He saw it was seaweed. Presently more strands came beating down on the spume to sting him.

The youth was crouching in his oilskins for protection, when he was surprised by a hand laid on his arm. He looked around and saw it was Deschaillon and the silent Farnol Greer.

"Eet makes bad weather," remarked the Frenchman, peering at the dark rolling Alps about the dock.

"Good thing both of you came," shouted Madden, turning the tiller over to the men. "It's as stiff as cold molasses--how are the sick ones?"

The boy saw Deschaillon grin and twirl his pointed mustache in the faint illumination. "Zay are very numerous," he laughed. But the Gaul had no sooner swung his weight against the wheel than his grimace vanished.

"Parbleu! Here, Greer, pull zis wheel with me!"

The two men caught the spokes and set their weight to it. Greer remained silent.

"Zis ees bad!" exclaimed Deschaillon. "Zis wheel will not go around!"

"What's the matter, do you think?" cried Leonard.

"Zee gear ees clogged, I think me."

"Go get a lantern and some men, Hogan--anybody who isn't lifeless. We've got to do something!"

The Frenchman obeyed, hurrying off into the darkness. Leonard resumed his place at the wheel with Greer to aid him. But both men could not swing the big dock around. The tiller was growing utterly unmanageable.

Nearly every dash of foam brought with it biting bits of seaweed now.

The silent Greer endured the whipping without wincing or speaking. Even in the midst of their work, Leonard found time to wonder why this fellow had stolen his medicine chest.

Presently the two helmsmen could barely turn the wheel. Madden could feel the jerking of the cable even through the great mass of pitching iron. Then the wheel clamped viselike. The dock's headlight and the intermittent glow of the tug teetered, swung out of line, crossed each other, like dancing fires. In a sort of panic, the two strained at the solid wheel. A huger wave came roaring by, flung the enormous square prow high in air. As it fell off with a shock, Madden felt a little quiver pass over the lumbering pontoons. The dock ceased taking the upheaved water with her slow, constant, aggressive movement.

The cable had parted!

Madden wondered dully what sort of cataclysm had occurred on the little tug at that tremendous strain.

Both men still hung to the hand-grips on the useless wheel as the dock rose and dropped, thundered and groaned. Now and then from the storm-swept wave tops Madden could catch the glimmer of the _Vulcan's_ light. This slipped farther and farther into the void, heaving night, then he saw it no more.

A sense of vast desolation swept over the American, and he was still staring into the black pandemonium ahead when Deschaillon, Hogan and a third man came struggling toward him.

"You may go back!" he yelled wearily above the uproar. "Go back--there's nothing to do. The cable's broke--the _Vulcan_ is gone."

CHAPTER IV

AN INTERRUPTED MEETING

Convinced that there was nothing else to be done on the big dock, Madden went to his cabin, threw himself on the bunk, and there tumbled and tossed through the stormy night, sleeping brokenly and dreaming of the missing _Vulcan_.

Finally a bleary dawn whitened his cabin ports and the lad scrambled into damp clothes, picked up the mate's battered telescope and went on deck.

He fully expected to see the _Vulcan_ lying close by, but as he glanced around in the dull light, an extraordinary scene shunted all thoughts of the tug from his mind. The wind had lulled, but there still rolled high a most unusual ocean. As far as he could see moved a long solemn procession of hills covered with splotches and serpentine lines of grays, olives, yellows--an ocean in motley. The great waves wove these sinuous markings up and down, in and out, confusing the eye with changing mazes.

Madden went forward and studied the nearer formations under the dock's prow. This astonishing effect was caused by seaweed. It was the seaweed spray of this seaweed ocean that had whipped him during the night.

A glance toward the stern of the dock solved the mystery of the balky steering gear. The temporary sheathing was choked with the slimy stuff.

Tons of it had beaten over into the dock so that there was a week's work of cleaning ahead. The whole interior of the pontoons looked gutted; empty kegs, barrels had gone overboard, boats had been washed away, the big coal pile was scattered like pebbles and some half of it lost. And one odd trifle gripped Madden's heart--the fresh paint over which the crew had toiled so patiently looked old and dingy.

As he studied the scene, two seasick navvies tottered out on deck to sniff the clean air. They dismally surveyed the traces of the storm.

Then they moved weakly toward the boy, who was now scrutinizing the horizon with his glass.

"See any sign of 'er, sir?" asked Galton saluting.

Madden took down the binoculars. "Not a trace--feel better?"

"Some better, sir, but my stomach is still like th' hocean, sir, a bit unsettled. May I arsk where we are, sir? I never saw such streaky water before."

"Sargasso Sea," replied Leonard.

Galton grunted and stared at the spangled waves. Under its load of seaweed, the sea was falling rapidly, and presently other seasick navvies came on deck. A dismal lot they made, pasty and sick and draggled.