A sailor started, ducking low, but he ran back when the boom came across the deck with such a vicious swing that the iron bar fairly screamed through the air.
"Gawd-a-mighty! She"ll bang the mast out of her!" clamored Captain Downs. "Get some men to those halyards, Mr. Dodge! Catch that boom!"
The mate ran and kicked at a sailor, shouting profane orders. He seized the fellow and thrust him toward the pins where the halyards were belayed. But at that instant the rushing boom came hurtling overhead with its slung-shot, and the iron banged the rail almost exactly where the fouled line was secured. The mate and the sailor fell flat on their faces and crawled back from the zone of danger.
"Get some rope and noose that boom! La.s.soo it!" commanded the master, touching up his orders with some lurid sea oaths.
But the men who stepped forward did so timidly and slowly, and dodged back when the boom threatened. The flying bar was a terrible weapon. Now it swung in toward the mast--now swept in wider radius. Just where it would next sweep the deck between the masts depended on the vagary of wave and wind. It was perfectly apparent that anybody who got in its path would meet death as instantly as a fly under a housewife"s spanker.
Life is sweet, even if a man is black and is toiling for a dollar-a-day wage.
And even if a man is a mate, at a higher wage and with more responsibility, he is inclined to think of himself before he figures on saving a mast and gear for a schooner"s owners.
"What kind of a gor-rammed crew have I got aboard here?" shrieked the master.
"About the kind that all wind-jammers carry these days," said a voice at his elbow.
Captain Downs whirled and found Mayo there. "How do you dare to speak to me, you tin-kettle sailor?" demanded the master. In his pa.s.sion he went on: "You"re aboard here under false pretenses. You can"t even do your work. You have made this vessel liable by a.s.saulting a pa.s.senger. You"re no good! With you aboard here I"m just the same as one man short." But he had no time to devote to this person.
He turned away and began to revile his mates and his sailors, his voice rising higher each time the rampaging boom crashed from side to side.
One or two of the backstays had parted, and it was plain that before long the mast would go by the board.
"If that mast comes out it"s apt to smash us clear to the water-line,"
lamented the captain.
"If you can make your herd of sheep give me a hand at the right time, I"ll show you that a tin-kettle sailor is as good as a wind-jammer swab," said Mayo, retaliating with some of the same sort of rancor that Captain Downs had been expending. In that crisis he was bold enough to presume on his ident.i.ty as a master mariner. "I"d hate to find this kind of a bunch on any steamboat I"ve ever had experience with."
Then he ran away before the captain had time to retort. He made a slide across the danger zone on his back, like a runner in a ball game. This move brought him into a safe place between the mainmast and the mizzen.
There was a coil of extra cable here, and he grabbed the loose end and deftly made a running bowline knot. He set the noose firmly upon his shoulders, leaped up, and caught at the hoops on the mizzenmast.
"See to it that the line runs free from that coil, and stand by for orders!" he shouted, and though his dyed skin was dark and he wore the garb of the common sailor, he spoke with the unmistakable tone of the master mariner. The second mate ran to the line and took charge.
"This is a bucking bronco, all right!" muttered Mayo. "But it"s for the honor of the steamboat men! I"ll show this gang!"
He poised himself for a few moments on the crotch of the boom, clinging to the cringles of the luff--the short ropes with which the sail is reefed.
As he stood there, gathering himself for his desperate undertaking, waiting for opportunity, taking the measure of the lashing and insensate monster whom he had resolved to subdue, he heard Captain Downs bawl an impatient command:
"Pa.s.sengers go below!"
Mayo looked aft and saw Alma Marston clinging to the spike-rack of the spanker mast. The coach-house lantern shone upon her white face.
"Go below!" repeated the master.
She shook her head.
"This is no place for a woman."
"The vessel is going to sink!" she quavered.
"The schooner is all right. You go below!"
How bitter her fear was Mayo could not determine. But even at his distance he could see stubborn resolution on her countenance.
"If I"ve got to die, I"ll not die down there in a box," she cried. "I"m going to stay right here."
Captain Downs swore and turned his back on her. Apparently he did not care to come to a real clinch with this feminine mutineer.
The great spar crashed out to the extent of its arc, and the sail volleyed with it, ballooning under the weight of the wind. The reef-points were no longer within Mayo"s reach. He ran along the boom, arms outspread to steady himself, and was half-way to its end before the telltale surge under him gave warning. Then he fell upon the huge stick, rolled under it, and shoved arms and legs under the foot of the sail.
Barely had he clutched the spar in fierce embrace before it began its return journey. It was a dizzy sweep across the deck, a breath-taking plunge.
When the spar collided with the stays he felt as if arms and legs would be wrenched from his body. He did not venture to move or to relax his hold. He clung with all his strength, and nerved himself for the return journey. He had watched carefully, and knew something of the vagaries of the giant flail. When it was flung to port the wind helped to hold it there until the resistless surge of the schooner sent it flying wild once more. He knew that no mere flesh and blood could endure many of those collisions with the stays. He resolved to act on the next oscillation to port, in order that his strength might not be gone.
"See that the cable runs free!" he screamed as he felt the stick lift for its swoop.
He swung himself upward over the spar the moment it struck, and the momentum helped him. He ran again, steadying himself like a tight-wire acrobat. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the noose from his shoulders, slipped it over the end of the boom, and yelled an order, with all the strength of his lungs:
"Pull her taut!"
At that instant the boom started to swing again.
Standing on the end of the spar, he was outboard; the frothing sea was under him. He could not jump then; to leap when the boom was sweeping across the deck meant a skinful of broken bones; to wait till the boom brought up against the stays, so he realized, would invite certain disaster; he would either be crushed between the boom and shrouds or snapped far out into the ocean as a bean "is filliped by a thumb. On the extreme end of the spar the leverage would be so great that he could not hope to cling there with arms and legs.
A queer flick of thought brought to Mayo the phrase, "Between the devil and the deep sea." That flying boom was certainly the devil, and the foaming sea looked mighty deep.
Her weather roll was more sluggish and Mayo had a moment to look about for some mode of escape.
He saw the sail of "number four" mast sprawling loose in its lazy-jacks, unfurled and showing a tumbled expanse of canvas. When he was inside the rail, and while the boom was gathering momentum, he took his life in his hands and his grit between his teeth and leaped toward the sail. He made the jump just at the moment when the boom would give him the most help.
He heard Captain Downs"s astonished oath when he dove over that worthy mariner"s head, a human comet in a twenty-foot parabola.
He landed in the sail on his hands and knees, yelling, even as he alighted: "Catch her, boys!"
They did it when the spar banged against the stays. They surged on the rope, tightened the noose, and before the vessel rolled again had made half a dozen turns of the free end of the cable around the nearest cleats.
Mayo scrambled down from the sail and helped them complete the work of securing the spar. He pa.s.sed near Captain Downs when the job had been finished.
"Well," growled the master of the _Alden_, "what do you expect me to say to that?"
"I simply ask you to keep from saying something."
"What?"
"That a steamboat man can"t earn his pay aboard a wind-jammer, sir. I don"t like to feel that I am under obligations in any way."
The master grunted.
"And if the little thing I have done helps to square that break I made by licking your pa.s.senger I"ll be glad of it," added Mayo.