the thunder stopped. Rain that fell in sheets swept the deck and beat their clothes against their skin. One heard nothing but the roar of the deluge and the darkness could not be pierced. After a few minutes Marston felt the strain on the wheel get easier and lost the sense of speed. The deck did not seem to be lifted forward and he thought the bows had resumed their proper level. When he turned his head the rain no longer lashed his face, the foresail flapped, and the straining, rattling noises began again. It looked as if the wind had suddenly got light.
"Let's bring her round," he shouted and heard his voice hoarse and loud.
Wyndham signed agreement, they turned the wheel, and the crew ran about the deck. She came round and a few minutes afterwards headed out to sea, lurching slowly across the swell that now rolled and broke with crests of foam. The sky had cleared, but not far off an ominous rumble came out of the gloom astern.
"We'll wait for daybreak before we make sail," Wyndham remarked. "You can get below. My watch has begun."
"I suppose you were with me on the boom?"
"I was on the boom," said Wyndham. "Somebody else was near."
"Do you imply you didn't know whom it was when you held me up?"
"Oh, well," said Wyndham, laughing, "it's not important. Suppose I had grabbed a Krooboy who was falling? Do you imagine I ought to have let him go? Anyhow, we helped each other. I don't expect I'd have reached the deck if I had been alone."
Marston said no more. One felt some reserve when one talked about things like that. He looked to windward, and seeing the night was calm, went below.
CHAPTER VI
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
Marston lounged with languid satisfaction on a locker in the stern cabin. He had borne some strain and his body felt strangely slack although his brain was active. The cabin was small and very plain, because the yacht had been altered below decks when she was fitted for carrying cargo. Moisture trickled down the matchboarded ceiling, big warm drops fell from the beams, and a brass lamp swung about as she rolled. Marston, however, knew this was an illusion; the beams moved but the lamp was still.
There were confused noises. Water washed about inside the lurching hull, although a sharp clank overhead indicated that somebody was occupied at the pump; water gurgled, with a noise like rolling gravel, outside the planks. Timbers groaned, a seam in the matchboarding opened and shut, and a dull concussion shook the boat when her bows plunged into the swell. The swell was high, although the wind had dropped. Marston knew these noises and found them soothing. They belonged to the sea, and he loved the sea, although he had not long since fought it for his life. Now the strain was over, he felt the struggle with the tornado had braced and steadied him.
In the tropics, it was the land he did not like. Perhaps he was getting morbid, for after all he had not seen much of the African coast and yet it frankly daunted him. His confused recollections were like a bad dream; muddy lagoons surrounded by dreary mangroves from which the miasma stole at night, hot and steamy forests where mysterious dangers lurked, and rotting damp factories from which the burning sun could not drive the shadow that weighed the white man down. Marston was not imaginative, but he had felt the gloom.
He pondered about it curiously. The shadow was, so to speak, impalpable; vague yet sinister. Now and then white men rebelled against it with noisy revels, but when the liquor was out the gloom crept back and some drank again until they died. Yet the coast had a subtle charm, against which it was prudent to steel oneself. The shadow was a reflection of the deeper gloom in which the naked bushmen moved and served the powers that rule the dark.
Fever-worn traders declared there were such powers. One heard strange stories that the men who told them obviously believed. It looked as if the Ju-Ju magicians were not altogether impostors; they knew things the white man did not and by this knowledge ruled. Their rule was owned and firm. Marston had thought it ridiculous, but now he doubted. There was something behind the hocus-pocus; something that moved one's curiosity and tempted one to rash experiment. Marston knew this was what he feared. Harry was rash and had rather felt the fascination than the gloom.
Marston banished his disturbing thoughts and began to muse about their struggle with the sail. Harry was a normal, healthy white man then. It was rather his sailor's instincts than conscious resolution that led him to keep up the fight when it looked as if he must be thrown off the boom. He would have been thrown off before he owned he was beaten. One did things like that at sea, because they must be done, and did not think them fine. Marston reviewed the fight, remembering his terror when he slipped and how his confidence returned after Harry seized his arm. The thought of the lonely plunge had daunted him; it was different when he knew he would not plunge alone. If Harry and he could not reach the deck, they would drop into the dark together. That was all, but it meant much. For one thing, it meant that Marston must go where his comrade went, although he might not like the path. In the meantime he was tired and got into his bunk.
When he went on deck in the morning the breeze was fresh and Columbine drove through the water under all plain sail, for they had some spare canvas on board. The sky was clear and the sun sparkled on the foam that leaped about the bows and ran astern in a broad white wake. The old boat was fast and there was something exhilarating in her buoyant lift and roll. Marston and Wyndham got breakfast under an awning on deck. Wyndham wore thin white clothes and a silk belt. His skin was burned a dark red and his keen blue eyes sparkled. One saw the graceful lines of his muscular figure; he looked alert and virile.
"You're fresh enough this morning," Marston remarked. "My back is sore and my arms ache. It was a pretty big strain to secure the gaff."
Wyndham laughed. "If the sail had blown away from us, the mast would have gone and the boat have drifted into the surf."
"I suppose we knew this unconsciously. Anyhow, I didn't argue about the thing."
"You held on," said Wyndham. "Well, I expect it's an example of an instinct men developed when they used the old sailing ships. They must beat the sea or drown, and sometimes the safety of all depended on the nerve of one. I expect it led to a kind of class-conscientiousness. The common need produced a code."
"The instinct's good. Somehow, all you learn at sea is good; I mean, it's morally bracing."
Wyndham smiled and indicated a faint dark line that melted into the horizon on the starboard hand.
"It's different in Africa, for example?"
"Oh, well," said Marston cautiously, "Africa has drawbacks, but if you don't get fever and are satisfied to look at things on the surface, you might stay there sometime and not get much harm."
Wyndham saw Marston meant to warn him and was amused. Bob was rather obvious, but he was sincere.
"Suppose you're not satisfied with things as they look on the surface and want to find out what they are beneath?" he asked.
"Then I think you ought to clear out and go back to the North."
"A simple plan! As a rule, your plans are simple. I'm curious, however, and sometimes like to indulge my curiosity. It's easily excited in Africa. There is much the white man doesn't know; he's hardly begun to grasp the negro's point of view."
"The negro has no point of view. He gropes in the dark."
"I doubt it," said Wyndham thoughtfully. "I rather imagine he sees a light, but perhaps not the light we know. There's a rude order in his country and men with knowledge rule. The Leopards, the Ghost Crocodiles, and the other strange societies don't hold power for nothing. Power that's felt has some foundation."
