The Rescue | Page 7

rudder grinding hard up and hard down. What are you up to,
Shaw? Any wind?"
"Ye-es," drawled Shaw, putting his head down the skylight and
speaking into the gloom of the cabin. "I thought there was a light air,
and--but it's gone now. Not a breath anywhere under the heavens."
He withdrew his head and waited a while by the skylight, but heard
only the chirping of the indefatigable canary, a feeble twittering that
seemed to ooze through the drooping red blossoms of geraniums

growing in flower-pots under the glass panes. He strolled away a step
or two before the voice from down below called hurriedly:
"Hey, Shaw? Are you there?"
"Yes, Captain Lingard," he answered, stepping back. "Have we drifted
anything this afternoon?"
"Not an inch, sir, not an inch. We might as well have been at anchor."
"It's always so," said the invisible Lingard. His voice changed its tone
as he moved in the cabin, and directly afterward burst out with a clear
intonation while his head appeared above the slide of the cabin
entrance:
"Always so! The currents don't begin till it's dark, when a man can't see
against what confounded thing he is being drifted, and then the breeze
will come. Dead on end, too, I don't doubt."
Shaw moved his shoulders slightly. The Malay at the wheel, after
making a dive to see the time by the cabin clock through the skylight,
rang a double stroke on the small bell aft. Directly forward, on the main
deck, a shrill whistle arose long drawn, modulated, dying away softly.
The master of the brig stepped out of the companion upon the deck of
his vessel, glanced aloft at the yards laid dead square; then, from the
door-step, took a long, lingering look round the horizon.
He was about thirty-five, erect and supple. He moved freely, more like
a man accustomed to stride over plains and hills, than like one who
from his earliest youth had been used to counteract by sudden swayings
of his body the rise and roll of cramped decks of small craft, tossed by
the caprice of angry or playful seas.
He wore a grey flannel shirt, and his white trousers were held by a blue
silk scarf wound tightly round his narrow waist. He had come up only
for a moment, but finding the poop shaded by the main-topsail he
remained on deck bareheaded. The light chestnut hair curled close
about his well-shaped head, and the clipped beard glinted vividly when

he passed across a narrow strip of sunlight, as if every hair in it had
been a wavy and attenuated gold wire. His mouth was lost in the heavy
moustache; his nose was straight, short, slightly blunted at the end; a
broad band of deeper red stretched under the eyes, clung to the cheek
bones. The eyes gave the face its remarkable expression. The eyebrows,
darker than the hair, pencilled a straight line below the wide and
unwrinkled brow much whiter than the sunburnt face. The eyes, as if
glowing with the light of a hidden fire, had a red glint in their greyness
that gave a scrutinizing ardour to the steadiness of their gaze.
That man, once so well known, and now so completely forgotten
amongst the charming and heartless shores of the shallow sea, had
amongst his fellows the nickname of "Red-Eyed Tom." He was proud
of his luck but not of his good sense. He was proud of his brig, of the
speed of his craft, which was reckoned the swiftest country vessel in
those seas, and proud of what she represented.
She represented a run of luck on the Victorian goldfields; his sagacious
moderation; long days of planning, of loving care in building; the great
joy of his youth, the incomparable freedom of the seas; a perfect
because a wandering home; his independence, his love--and his anxiety.
He had often heard men say that Tom Lingard cared for nothing on
earth but for his brig--and in his thoughts he would smilingly correct
the statement by adding that he cared for nothing LIVING but the brig.
To him she was as full of life as the great world. He felt her live in
every motion, in every roll, in every sway of her tapering masts, of
those masts whose painted trucks move forever, to a seaman's eye,
against the clouds or against the stars. To him she was always
precious--like old love; always desirable--like a strange woman; always
tender--like a mother; always faithful --like the favourite daughter of a
man's heart.
For hours he would stand elbow on rail, his head in his hand and
listen--and listen in dreamy stillness to the cajoling and promising
whisper of the sea, that slipped past in vanishing bubbles along the
smooth black-painted sides of