He spoke to the sailors, and at the first sound of his dovelike,
cooing voice they paused to hear. He extended to them his own ineffable
serenity and peace. His soft voice and simple thoughts flowed out
to them in a magic stream, soothing them against their wills. Long
forgotten things came back to them, and some remembered lullaby songs of
childhood and the content and rest of the mother's arm at the end of the
day. There was no more trouble, no more danger, no more irk, in all
the world. Everything was as it should be, and it was only a matter of
course that they should turn their backs upon the land and put to sea
once more with hell fire hot beneath their feet.
McCoy spoke simply; but it was not what he spoke. It was his personality
that spoke more eloquently than any word he could utter. It was an
alchemy of soul occultly subtile and profoundly deep--a mysterious
emanation of the spirit, seductive, sweetly humble, and terribly
imperious. It was illumination in the dark crypts of their souls, a
compulsion of purity and gentleness vastly greater than that which
resided in the shining, death-spitting revolvers of the officers.
The men wavered reluctantly where they stood, and those who had loosed
the turns made them fast again. Then one, and then another, and then all
of them, began to sidle awkwardly away.
McCoy's face was beaming with childlike pleasure as he descended from
the top of the cabin. There was no trouble. For that matter there had
been no trouble averted. There never had been any trouble, for there was
no place for such in the blissful world in which he lived.
“You hypnotized em,” Mr. Konig grinned at him, speaking in a low voice.
“Those boys are good,” was the answer. “Their hearts are good. They have
had a hard time, and they have worked hard, and they will work hard to
the end.”
Mr. Konig had not time to reply. His voice was ringing out orders, the
sailors were springing to obey, and the PYRENEES was paying slowly off
from the wind until her bow should point in the direction of Makemo.
The wind was very light, and after sundown almost ceased. It was
insufferably warm, and fore and aft men sought vainly to sleep. The deck
was too hot to lie upon, and poisonous vapors, oozing through the seams,
crept like evil spirits over the ship, stealing into the nostrils and
windpipes of the unwary and causing fits of sneezing and coughing.
The stars blinked lazily in the dim vault overhead; and the full moon,
rising in the east, touched with its light the myriads of wisps and
threads and spidery films of smoke that intertwined and writhed and
twisted along the deck, over the rails, and up the masts and shrouds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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