Leaving them to lash the cask securely, I stole along the deck to the forecastle and peered in. The men, in their headlong flight, had neglected to close the doors, and the place was afloat. In the flickering light from a small and very smoky sea-lamp it was a dismal picture. No self-respecting cave-man, I am sure, would have lived in such a hole.
Even as I looked a bursting sea filled the runway between the house and rail, and through the doorway in which I stood the freezing water rushed waist-deep. I had to hold on to escape being swept inside the room. From a top bunk, lying on his side, Andy Fay regarded me steadily with his bitter blue eyes. Seated on the rough table of heavy planks, his sea-booted feet swinging in the water, Mulligan Jacobs pulled at his pipe. When he observed me he pointed to pulpy book-pages that floated about.
"Me library's gone to hell," he mourned as he indicated the flotsam.
"There's me Byron. An' there goes Zola an' Browning with a piece of Shakespeare runnin' neck an' neck, an' what's left of Anti-Christ makin' a bad last. An' there's Carlyle and Zola that cheek by jowl you can't tell 'em apart."Here the Elsinore lay down to starboard, and the water in the forecastle poured out against my legs and hips. My wet mittens slipped on the iron work, and I swept down the runway into the scuppers, where I was turned over and over by another flood that had just boarded from windward.
I know I was rather confused, and that I had swallowed quite a deal of salt water, ere I got my hands on the rungs of the ladder and climbed to the top of the house. On my way aft along the bridge Iencountered the crew coming for'ard. Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike were talking in the lee of the chart-house, and inside, as I passed below, Captain West was smoking a cigar.
After a good rub down, in dry pyjamas, I was scarcely back in my bunk with the Mind of Primitive Man before me, when the stampede over my head was repeated. I waited for the second rush. It came, and Iproceeded to dress.
The scene on the poop duplicated the previous one, save that the men were more excited, more frightened. They were babbling and chattering all together.
"Shut up!" Mr. Pike was snarling when I came upon them. "One at a time, and answer the captain's question.""It ain't no barrel this time, sir," Tom Spink said. "It's alive.
An' if it ain't the devil it's the ghost of a drownded man. I see 'm plain an' clear. He's a man, or was a man once--""They was two of 'em, sir," Richard Giller, one of the "bricklayers,"broke in.
"I think he looked like Petro Marinkovich, sir," Tom Spink went on.
"An' the other was Jespersen--I seen 'm," Giller added.
"They was three of 'em, sir," said Nosey Murphy. "O'Sullivan, sir, was the other one. They ain't devils, sir. They're drownded men.
They come aboard right over the bows, an' they moved slow like drownded men. Sorensen seen the first one first. He caught my arm an' pointed, an' then I seen 'm. He was on top the for'ard-house.
And Olansen seen 'm, an' Deacon, sir, an' Hackey. We all seen 'm, sir . . . an' the second one; an' when the rest run away I stayed long enough to see the third one. Mebbe there's more. I didn't wait to see."Captain West stopped the man.
"Mr. Pike," he said wearily, "will you straighten this nonsense out.""Yes, sir," Mr. Pike responded, then turned on the man. "Come on, all of you! There's three devils to tie down this time."But the men shrank away from the order and from him.
"For two cents . . . " I heard Mr. Pike growl to himself, then choke off utterance.
He flung about on his heel and started for the bridge. In the same order as on the previous trip, Mr. Mellaire second, and I bringing up the rear, we followed. It was a similar journey, save that we caught a ducking midway on the first span of bridge as well as a ducking on the 'midship-house.
We halted on top the for'ard-house. In vain Mr. Pike flashed his light-stick. Nothing was to be seen nor heard save the white-flecked dark water on our deck, the roar of the gale in our rigging, and the crash and thunder of seas falling aboard. We advanced half-way across the last span of bridge to the f ore-castle head, and were driven to pause and hang on at the foremast by a bursting sea.
