They saw little more of Rall.  He came aft and fetched his meals away; but he was crazed and made a sort of kennel for himself forward, and the two men left on the smack had enough upon their hands to hinder them from waiting on him.  The gale showed no sign of abatement; the fleet was scattered; no glimpse of the sun was visible at any time; and the compass was somewhere at the bottom of the sea.

“We may be making a bit of headway no’th, or a bit of leeway west,” said Weeks, “or we may be doing a sternboard.  All that I’m sure of is that you and me are one day going to open Gorleston Harbour.  This smack’s cost me too dear for me to lose her now.  Lucky there’s the tell-tale compass in the cabin to show us the wind hasn’t shifted.”

All the energy of the man was concentrated upon this wrestle with the gale for the ownership of the Willing Mind; and he imparted his energy to his companion.  They lived upon deck, wet and starved and perishing with the cold—­the cold of December in the North Sea, when the spray cuts the face like a whip-cord.  They ate by snatches when they could, which was seldom; and they slept by snatches when they could, which was even less often.  And at the end of the fourth day there came a blinding fall of snow and sleet, which drifted down the companion, sheeted the ropes with ice, and hung the yards with icicles, and which made every inch of brass a searing-iron and every yard of the deck a danger to the foot.

It was when this storm began to fall that Weeks grasped Duncan fiercely by the shoulder.

“What is it you did on land?” he cried.  “Confess it, man!  There may be some chance for us if you go down on your knees and confess it.”

Duncan turned as fiercely upon Weeks.  Both men were overstrained with want of food and sleep.

“I’m not your Jonah—­don’t fancy it!  I did nothing on land!”

“Then what did you come out for?”

“What did you?  To fight and wrestle for your ship, eh?  Well, I came out to fight and wrestle for my immortal soul, and let it go at that!”

Weeks turned away, and as he turned, slipped on the frozen deck.  A lurch of the smack sent him sliding into the rudder-chains, where he lay.  Once he tried to rise, and fell back.  Duncan hauled himself along the bulwarks to him.

“Hurt?”

“Leg broke.  Get me down into the cabin.  Lucky there’s the tell-tale.  We’ll get the Willing Mind berthed by the quay, see if we don’t.”  That was still his one thought, his one belief.

Duncan hitched a rope round Weeks, underneath his arms, and lowered him as gently as he could down the companion.

“Lift me on to the table so that my head’s just beneath the compass!  Right!  Now take a turn with the rope underneath the table, or I’ll roll off.  Push an oily under my head, and then go for’ard and see if you can find a fish-box.  Take a look that the wheel’s fast.”