Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/145

“Up, you dogs! How stands he?”

They poured out of the cabin to the deck.

“He stands on the lee bow!”

“Bear up the helm! A fresh man at the helm!” the Old One thundered. He squinted across the sea. “Come, Harry — here on the poop — and tell me if she be not a ketch. Now she lifts — now she falls. 'T will be a chase, I take it.”

The round little mate came nimbly up the ladder. “Helm a-luff!’’ said he in his light, quick voice, which at first the helmsman failed to hear. ‘‘Helm a-luff! A-luff, man! Art deaf? The courses hide her. There she lifts! Yea, a ketch. Let us see. It is now an hour to sunset. If we stand across her bows and bear a sharp watch we shall come up with her in early evening and a very proper moment it will be.”

His light, incisive speech, so unlike the boisterous ranting of the Old One, in its own way curiously influenced even the Old One himself. A man who has a trick of getting at sound reasons, unmoved by bluster or emotion, can hold his own in any company; and many a quiet voice can fire a ship’s crew to action as a slow match fires a cannon.

“Now, young men,” Martin roared, “up aloft and loose fore and main topsails. And oh that our stout mizzenmast were standing yet!”

“No, no, no!” cried Harry Malcolm and he almost raised his voice. ‘‘Thy haste, thou pop-eyed fool, would work the end of us all. Think you, if they see us fling every sail to the wind, they will abide our coming without charging their guns and stationing every gunner with linstock and lighted match? Nay, though she be but a ketch, let us go limping across her bows as lame as a pipped hen.”