The Great Quest Part 21

Now Gleazen would lean his elbows on the rail and search the horizon; now he would hand the gla.s.s to Matterson and stride the deck in a fury of impatience. Below, the log-book lay open on the cabin table at a blank page, on which there was a rough pencil-sketch of coast and a river and an island. On a chart, which lay half open across a chair, someone had drawn a circle with a pair of compa.s.ses, half on land and half on sea; and when Arnold silently drew my attention to it, I saw that in the circle someone had penciled the same sketch that I had seen on the blank page of the log-book.

Coast, river, and island! We studied the sketch in silence and talked of it afterward.

That evening, for the first time in many hours, we came on Captain North alone by the rail.

"Someone has drawn an island on the chart," said Arnold, slowly.

Gideon North growled a.s.sent.

"Well?" said Arnold.

"It would seem that the blithering idiots don't know its bearings within a hundred miles, and yet they expect me to bring it straight aboard. One says thus and so; t'other says so and thus. Gleazen talked loudest and I took his word first--like a fool, for he's no navigator. I'd not put such foolishness beyond Seth Upham, but the others ought to know better. Aye! And they do know better."

"What island?" I demanded.

He shot a keen glance at me.

"Hm! Have they said naught to you?"

"Not a word."

Arnold was smiling.

"Nor to you?" Gideon North demanded, seeing him smile.

"Nor to me."

"Then," said he, "you two know less than I, and I know little enough."

"If you know more than we, pray tell us what you can?"

"After all," said he, "I only know that we are looking for an island, and that when we find it the deviltry is yet to begin--" He smiled grimly. "We'll yet have a chance to see sparks fly from those weapons Gleazen hung in the cabin. I hear he's a clever man at the smallsword."

When he said that, Captain North looked at Arnold and me as if to question us.

"Clever?" I replied. "Yes, he's clever, though--"

I then saw that Arnold was smiling. I remembered seeing him smile when Gleazen and I were fencing on the green. I remembered his saying that he had not been laughing at me. And now he was smiling again!

I stammered with embarra.s.sment and clumsily concluded, "But--but not so very--perhaps not very clever."

In the waist I heard Gleazen call in a low voice, "Masthead! You there, wake up!"

"Ay-ay, sir," came the man's reply.

"Not so loud," said Gleazen. "Have you seen no lights--no land?"

"No lights, sir, and no land but the coast yonder, which we've seen these two days."

I could just make out that Gleazen was leaning on the bulwark and staring into the northeast.

"Did you hear that?" Captain North asked in a whisper.

We both had heard it.

"I'm thinking," Captain North presently muttered, "that we're like to see more land than will be good for us. Mark the sky to westward."

It was banked with clouds.

The island, when we found it, which we did early next day, proved to be low and flat and marshy. Behind it, exactly according to the sketch in the log-book and on the chart, lay the mouth of a river.

On the mainland in each direction, as far as we could see, and on the bar at the mouth of the river, and on the outer sh.o.r.e of the island, which seemed to be in the nature of a delta, although with deep water behind it where the flow of the river appeared to have kept a Y-shaped channel open, a great surf broke with m.u.f.fled roar; and in the channel a ruffle of choppy waves indicated that stream and tide combined to make a formidable current.

As we bore down on it, Gleazen and Matterson and Seth Upham drew apart and stood smiling as they talked together in undertones. But Captain North and Mr. Severance and some of the older sailors were studying sky and wind and currents, and their frowns indicated that much was amiss.

To me, watching Gleazen and Matterson, it seemed strange that men who but a little while ago had been so fiercely eager should all at once become as subdued as deacons before the communion table; and it was only when I edged around until I could see Gleazen's face that I suspected the wild glee that the man was restraining. The light in his eyes and the change in his expression so fascinated me that for the moment I almost forgot Arnold Lamont and Gideon North and the alliance that bound us together, almost forgot my poor uncle and his wild hopes, almost forgot the very island whose low and sedgy sh.o.r.es we were approaching.

"Gentlemen," cried Captain North,--his voice startled me as much as those whom he addressed,--"would you wreck this vessel by keeping me here on a lee sh.o.r.e with heaven only knows what weather brewing?

Look for yourselves at those clouds in the southwest. If this harbor, of which you were talking yesterday, is within fifty miles of us, we must run for it. If not, we must stand off sh.o.r.e and prepare to ride out the storm."

"The harbor, Captain North," Matterson returned, his light voice hard with antagonism, "is much less than fifty miles from here. You will lay by for one hour while we go ash.o.r.e on that island yonder; then I will pilot you to harbor."

"_Mister Matterson!_" said Captain North calmly, turning on the giant of a man beside him, "are you mate or master?"

"Captain North," Matterson very quietly replied, "I am mate of this vessel, and as mate I do not dictate. Have I not worked faithfully and well on this voyage? Have I not carried out every order of yours?"

It was true, for to the surprise of Gideon North and Arnold and myself, he had made a first-cla.s.s mate.

"But I also am a friend of the owner and as friend of the owner, I spoke just now, forgetting my place as mate, I ask you to pardon me."

In his words and his manner there was something so oily and insincere that from the bottom of my heart I distrusted him, and so, obviously enough, did Gideon North. But the man's sudden change of front took the weapons, so to speak, out of the captain's hands; and before he could reply Matterson said, "Mr. Upham, what are your wishes in the matter?"

I looked first at my uncle, then I looked back at Matterson, and as I looked at Matterson, I caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Neil Gleazen, who was staring at Uncle Seth with a scowl on his brow and with his lips moving. Turning again to my uncle, I once more saw on his face, now so weak, the pathetically timid expression that I had come to know so well.

"If there's no immediate danger--" he began.

"There's none at all!" Matterson and Gleazen cried with one voice.

"Then let us go ash.o.r.e, say for merely half an hour."

Captain North, with a shrug as of resignation, put the trumpet to his lips and gave orders that brought the brig into the wind with sails as.h.i.+ver.

"Come, lads," Gleazen cried to Arnold and me, "the more the merrier."

So into the boat we climbed, and I for one was pleased to find that Abe Guptil had an oar.

It was about half a mile from the brig to the island, and when we reached it and hauled out the boat, I pushed ahead of the others.

Climbing from the edge of the water up the little incline at the head of the beach, I saw first of all, on the farther sh.o.r.e a quarter of a mile away, the ribs and broken planking of a wrecked s.h.i.+p. Then, before I had taken another step, I saw some little creature running through the gra.s.s and looked after it eagerly, to discover what strange kind of animal would inhabit so barren and remote an isle.

At first I saw only that the animal was long and gray. Then it came out into plain sight, and I saw that it was a rat--an ordinary rat such as I had seen by the hundreds in old barns and in old s.h.i.+ps.