Pink hesitated, then he raised his voice. “Cap'n Smiley generally likes
me to wake him when he's slept as long's this.”
“Go up forward.”
“Well--”
He was starting, but he moved too slowly. McGlory's temper gave way, and
he struck him, with the back of his hand, across the face.
“You hit _me!_” The blood rushed into Harper's face; he drew himself up,
his fists contracting, the muscles of his bare forearms knotting. Ole
gazed impassively at the compass, but his fingers were twitching on the
spokes of the wheel; he saw from the expression of Harper's eyes that
the boy needed no assistance. For one tense moment, as they stood
there on the sloping deck, a faint light shining on them from the open
companionway, anything seemed possible. Had Mc-Glory been a coward he
would have retreated from the blazing figure before him; but he was not
a coward. Instead of retreating, he stepped forward, gripped Harper's
arm, and whirled him around. “Go up forward!” he said for the fourth
time. And Pink, swallowing hard, went.
A gentle sigh escaped the wheelsman. The mate turned on him; but Ole was
gazing out into the dark with an expressionless face. Into the silence
that followed came a gurgling snore from the cabin; if Pink had hoped to
wake the captain, he had failed. And the end of this brief incident was
that McGlory returned below and finished his supper, while the _Merry
Anne_ continued to point nor'east.
Towards eleven o'clock the moon rose and showed Duck Island six miles
off the port bow. McGlory was again at the wheel. He now brought her up
still closer to the wind, heading a few points off Outer Duck Island and
skimming the lower edge of Jennie Graham Shoal. Huddled up in the bow,
out of the mate's view, Harper and Larsen were watching out ahead,
pulling at their pipes and occasionally exchanging a whispered word or
two. Linding, the third sailor, lay flat on the deck by the windlass,
his head pillowed on a coil of rope, the regular sound of his breathing
telling that he was asleep. Soon Ole's practised eyes made out a bit of
land far off to port, and he pointed it out to his companion.
“What is it?”
“Meedle Duck Island, ya-as.”
A few minutes more and they saw a line of coast dead ahead.
“Manitoulin Island?” whispered Pink.
“Aye tank.”
On they went until the shore lay plainly before them in the
moonlight,--on until the breeze began to fail them, so close were they
in the shelter of the land. Finally they heard McGlory say in a guarded
voice, “Ready about, up there!” and they sprang to their places.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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