He picked up Bradish and threw him on the floor. When he turned he saw the girl's white, agonized, frightened face at the crack of the saloon door. “Captain Downs!” she shrieked, “that negro is killing him. He's killing Ralph!” The victor turned his back on her and lurched around the table on his way out. He stroked blood from his face with his palm, and was glad that she had not recognized him; and yet, her failure to do so, even though he was such a pitiable figure of the man she had known, was one more slash of the whip of anguish across his raw soul. For a moment they had stood there, face to face, and only blank unrecognition greeted him; it made this horrible contretemps seem all the more unreal. Mayo did not pause to listen to the ravings of Captain Downs, who came thrusting past her. Dizzy, bleeding, half blind, he rushed up the forward companionway and went into the black night on deck. The mate was bawling for all hands to shorten sail, and Mayo took his place with the toilers, who were manning sheets and downhauls. XXIII ~ THE MONSTER THAT SLIPPED ITS LEASH And there Captain Kirby proved a coward at last, And he played at bo-peep behind the mainmast, And there they did stand, boys, and shiver and shake, For fear that that terror their lives it would take. --Admiral Benbow. Rain came with the wind, and the weather settled into a sullen, driving, summer easterly. Late summer regularly furnishes one of those storms to the Atlantic coast, a recrudescence of the wintry gales, a trial run of the elements, a sort of inter-equinoctial testing out so that Eurus may be sure that his bellows is in working condition. Such a storm rarely gives warning ahead that it is to be severe. It seems to be a meteorological prank in order to catch mariners napping. At midnight the _Alden_ was plunging into creaming seas, her five masts thrummed by the blast. With five thousand tons of coal weighting her, she wallowed like a water-soaked log. Mayo, who was roused from his hideous agony of soul at four bells, morning, to go on deck for his watch, ventured as near the engine-room door as he dared, for the rain was soaking his meager garments and the red glow from within was grateful. The ship's pump was clanking, a circumstance in no way alarming, because the huge schooners of the coal trade are racked and wrenched in rough water. The second mate came to the engine-room, lugging the sounding-rod to the light in order to examine the smear on its freshly chalked length. He tossed it out on deck with a grunt of satisfaction. “Nothing to hurt!” he said to the engineer. “However, I'd rather be inside the capes in this blow. The old skimmer ain't what she used to be. Johnson, do you know that this schooner is all of two feet longer when she is loaded than when she is light?” “I knew she was hogged, but I didn't know it was as bad as that.”