"We'll talk it over first," the gangster announced.

"And I'll give you ten minutes," I returned. "If at the end of ten minutes you've not started taking in, it will be too late. I shall put a bullet into any man who shows himself."

"All right, we'll talk it over."

As they started to go back, I called:

"One moment."

They stopped and turned about.

"What have you done to Mr. Pike?" I asked.

Even the impa.s.sive Bert Rhine could not quite conceal his surprise.

"An' what have you done with Mr. Mellaire!" he retorted. "You tell us, an' we'll tell you."

I am confident of the genuineness of his surprise. Evidently the mutineers have been believing us guilty of the disappearance of the second mate, just as we have been believing them guilty of the disappearance of the first mate. The more I dwell upon it the more it seems the proposition of the Kilkenny cats, a case of mutual destruction on the part of the two mates.

"Another thing," I said quickly. "Where do you get your food?"

Bert Rhine laughed one of his silent laughs; Charles Davis a.s.sumed an expression of mysteriousness and superiority; and Shorty, leaping into view from the corner of the house, danced a jig of triumph.

I drew out my watch.

"Remember," I said, "you've ten minutes in which to make a start."

They turned and went for'ard, and, before the ten minutes were up, all hands were aloft and stowing canvas. All this time the wind, out of the north-west, was breezing up. The old familiar harp-chords of a rising gale were strumming along the rigging, and the men, I verily believe from lack of practice, were particularly slow at their work.

"It would be better if the upper-and-lower top-sails are set so that we can heave to," Margaret suggested. "They will steady her and make it more comfortable for us."

I seized the idea and improved upon it.

"Better set the upper and lower topsails so that we can handle the ship,"

I called to the gangster, who was ordering the men about, quite like a mate, from the top of the 'midship-house.

He considered the idea, and then gave the proper orders, although it was the Maltese c.o.c.kney, with Nancy and Sundry Buyers under him, who carried the orders out.

I ordered Tom Spink to the long-idle wheel, and gave him the course, which was due east by the steering compa.s.s. This put the wind on our port quarter, so that the _Elsinore_ began to move through the water before a fair breeze. And due east, less than a thousand miles away, lay the coast of South America and the port of Valparaiso.

Strange to say, none of our mutineers objected to this, and after dark, as we tore along before a full-sized gale, I sent my own men up on top the chart-house to take the gaskets off the spanker. This was the only sail we could set and trim and in every way control. It is true the mizzen-braces were still rigged aft to the p.o.o.p, according to Horn practice. But, while we could thus trim the mizzen-yards, the sails themselves, in setting or furling, were in the hands of the for'ard crowd.

Margaret, beside me in the darkness at the break of the p.o.o.p, put her hand in mine with a warm pressure, as both our tiny watches swayed up the spanker and as both of us held our breaths in an effort to feel the added draw in the _Elsinore's_ speed.

"I never wanted to marry a sailor," she said. "And I thought I was safe in the hands of a landsman like you. And yet here you are, with all the stuff of the sea in you, running down your easting for port. Next thing, I suppose, I'll see you out with a s.e.xtant, shooting the sun or making star-observations."

CHAPTER XLVI

Four more days have pa.s.sed; the gale has blown itself out; we are not more than three hundred and fifty miles off Valparaiso; and the _Elsinore_, this time due to me and my own stubbornness, is rolling in the wind and heading nowhere in a light breeze at the rate of nothing but driftage per hour.

In the height of the gusts, in the three days and nights of the gale, we logged as much as eight, and even nine, knots. What bothered me was the acquiescence of the mutineers in my programme. They were sensible enough in the simple matter of geography to know what I was doing. They had control of the sails, and yet they permitted me to run for the South American coast.

More than that, as the gale eased on the morning of the third day, they actually went aloft, set top-gallant-sails, royals, and skysails, and trimmed the yards to the quartering breeze. This was too much for the Saxon streak in me, whereupon I wore the _Elsinore_ about before the wind, fetched her up upon it, and lashed the wheel. Margaret and I are agreed in the hypothesis that their plan is to get insh.o.r.e until land is sighted, at which time they will desert in the boats.

"But we don't want them to desert," she proclaims with flashing eyes. "We are bound for Seattle. They must return to duty. They've got to, soon, for they are beginning to starve."

"There isn't a navigator aft," I oppose.

Promptly she withers me with her scorn.

"You, a master of books, by all the sea-blood in your body should be able to pick up the theoretics of navigation while I snap my fingers.

Furthermore, remember that I can supply the seamanship. Why, any squarehead peasant, in a six months' cramming course at any seaport navigation school, can pa.s.s the examiners for his navigator's papers.

That means six hours for you. And less. If you can't, after an hour's reading and an hour's practice with the s.e.xtant, take a lat.i.tude observation and work it out, I'll do it for you."

"You mean you know?"

She shook her head.

"I mean, from the little I know, that I know I can learn to know a meridian sight and the working out of it. I mean that I can learn to know inside of two hours."

Strange to say, the gale, after easing to a mild breeze, recrudesced in a sort of after-clap. With sails untrimmed and flapping, the consequent smashing, crashing, and rending of our gear can be imagined. It brought out in alarm every man for'ard.

"Trim the yards!" I yelled at Bert Rhine, who, backed for counsel by Charles Davis and the Maltese c.o.c.kney, actually came directly beneath me on the main deck in order to hear above the commotion aloft.

"Keep a-runnin, an' you won't have to trim," the gangster shouted up to me.

"Want to make land, eh?" I girded down at him. "Getting hungry, eh?

Well, you won't make land or anything else in a thousand years once you get all your top-hamper piled down on deck."

I have forgotten to state that this occurred at midday yesterday.

"What are you goin' to do if we trim?" Charles Davis broke in.

"Run off sh.o.r.e," I replied, "and get your gang out in deep sea where it will be starved back to duty."

"We'll furl, an' let you heave to," the gangster proposed.

I shook my head and held up my rifle. "You'll have to go aloft to do it, and the first man that gets into the shrouds will get this."

"Then she can go to h.e.l.l for all we care," he said, with emphatic conclusiveness.

And just then the fore-topgallant-yard carried away--luckily as the bow was down-pitched into a trough of sea-and when the slow, confused, and tangled descent was accomplished the big stick lay across the wreck of both bulwarks and of that portion of the bridge between the foremast and the forecastle head.

Bert Rhine heard, but could not see, the damage wrought. He looked up at me challengingly, and sneered: