man’s breast.

Then he became aware that he was soaked to the skin, and the wind was piercingly cold.

He murmured a phrase strongly reminiscent of the Americano who took hunting trips into the interior of Central America, and hurried to his cabin, where he stripped and rubbed his limbs to a glow before turning in.

[Pg 95]

[Pg 95]

CHAPTER VI

AN UNFORESEEN DISASTER

During the night the storm developed into that elemental chaos which the landsman exaggerates into a hurricane and the sailor logs as a strong northwesterly gale. Passage along the open decks of the Southern Cross became a hazardous undertaking, an experiment just practicable for a strong man clad in oilskins and seaboots, but positively dangerous for one unable to interpret the vagaries of a ship plunging through a heavy sea. A broken limb or ugly bruise was the certain penalty of an incautious movement, if, indeed, one was not swept overboard.

D

For a passenger—a non-combatant, so to speak—the only certain way to insure physical safety was to lie prone in a bunk, with a hand ever ready to seize the nearest rail when an unusually violent lurch tilted the vessel to an angle of forty-five degrees and simultaneously drove her nose into a veritable mountain of water.

Maseden contrived to sleep fitfully until a thin gray light, trickling through a tiny port [Pg 96]when momentarily free of wave-wash, told him that another day had dawned. The din was incessant. Inanimate things may be inarticulate to human ears, but they speak a language of their own on such occasions—an inchoate tongue made up of banging and clattering, of stunning vibrations, of wind-shrieks, of the groaning of steel framework, riveted plates, and seasoned timber.

[Pg 96]

The Southern Cross was tackling her work with stubborn energy, but she complained of its severity in every fibre. Ships, like men, prefer easy conditions, and growl in their own peculiar manner when compelled to wage a fierce and continuous fight for mere existence.

Of course a sailor never permits himself to think of his own craft in such wise. 

 Prev. P 55/189 next