The low mumbling from Turner’s room had persisted steadily.  Now it rose again in the sharp frenzy that had characterized it through the long night.

“Don’t look at me like that, man!” he cried, and then “He’s lost a hand!  A hand!”

Mrs. Turner went quickly into the cabin, and the sounds ceased.  I looked at Elsa, but she avoided my eyes.  I turned heavily and went up the companionway.

CHAPTER XV

A KNOCKING IN THE HOLD

It rained heavily all that day.  Late in the afternoon we got some wind, and all hands turned out to trim sail.  Action was a relief, and the weather suited our disheartened state better than had the pitiless August sun, the glaring white of deck and canvas, and the heat.

The heavy drops splashed and broke on top of the jolly-boat, and, as the wind came up, it rode behind us like a live thing.

Our distress signal hung sodden, too wet to give more than a dejected response to the wind that tugged at it.  Late in the afternoon we sighted a large steamer, and when, as darkness came on, she showed no indication of changing her course, Burns and I sent up a rocket and blew the fog horn steadily.  She altered her course then and came towards us, and we ran up our code flags for immediate assistance; but she veered off shortly after, and went on her way.  We made no further effort to attract her attention.  Burns thought her a passenger steamer for the Bermudas, and, as her way was not ours, she could not have been of much assistance.

One or two of the men were already showing signs of strain.  Oleson, the Swede, developed a chill, followed by fever and a mild delirium, and Adams complained of sore throat and nausea.  Oleson’s illness was genuine enough.  Adams I suspected of malingering.  He had told the men he would not go up to the crow’s-nest again without a revolver, and this I would not permit.

Our original crew had numbered nine—­with the cook and Williams, eleven.  But the two Negroes were not seamen, and were frightened into a state bordering on collapse.  Of the men actually useful, there were left only five:  Clarke, McNamara, Charlie Jones, Burns, and myself; and I was a negligible quantity as regarded the working of the ship.

With Burns and myself on guard duty, the burden fell on Clarke, McNamara, and Jones.  A suggestion of mine that we release Singleton was instantly vetoed by the men.  It was arranged, finally, that Clarke and McNamara take alternate watches at the wheel, and Jones be given the lookout for the night, to be relieved by either Burns or myself.

I watched the weather anxiously.  We were too short-handed to manage any sort of a gale; and yet, the urgency of our return made it unwise to shorten canvas too much.  It was as well, perhaps, that I had so much to distract my mind from the situation in the after house.